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THE   SCHOOL  IN  THE   HOME 


THE 

SCHOOL  IN  thp:  home 


Talks  with  Parents  and  Teachers 


Intensive  Child  Training 


By 

A.  A.  BERLE,  A.M.,  D.D. 

PEOPESSOR  OF  APPLIED  CHRISTIANITY  IN  TUFTS  COLLEGE 


New  York 

MOFFAT,  YARD   AND   COMPANY 

19i;3 


Copyright,  1912,  by 

MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 

Nbw  York 


All  rights  reserved 


Third  Printing 


C^.  ( 


TO 

TLina,  ^Mi,  Miriam  anb  i^ubolf 


FREELY  YE  HAVE  RECEIVED,  FREELY  GIVE 


v^II, 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I     INTRODUCTION 1 


LANGUAGE,  THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWL- 
EDGE   23 

,^111-  IMIND   FERTILIZATION 51 

IV    QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS 75 

'VV-  THE  ELIMINATION  OF  WASTE 99 

VI     HARNESSING  THE  IMAGINATION  .     .     .      .119 

^^11    MENTAL  SELF-ORGANIZATION Ul 

UVIII     BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION  .     .165, 

IX    THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  MIND     ....  187 


THE 
SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

I 

INTRODUCTION 

That  tliis  is  not  the  work  of  an  "educator" 
will  be  perfectly  clear  at  once  to  all  the  mem- 
bers of  that  fraternity  under  whose  notice  this 
book  comes.  But  that  does  not  necessarily  pre- 
clude the  possibility  of  clearness  of  vision  nor 
does  it  invalidate  certain  obvious  facts  of  ex])e- 
rience.  Education  is  one  of  those  things  in 
which  everybody  has  some  experience,  and  has 
not  been  reduced  to  an  exact  science,  if  indeed 
it  will  ever  become  a  science,  in  any  proper 
sense  at  all.  Human  life  and  the  human  mind 
are  constantly  undergoing  great  and  funda- 
mental changes.  The  point  of  view  which  pre- 
vails at  one  period  is  entirely  inadequate  for 
another.  For  example,  it  is  more  than  fifteen 
years  ago  since  the  present  writer  urged 
upon  a  large  assembly  the  need  for  increased 
industrial  and  technical  training  in  Massachu- 
setts and  the  reorganization  of  the  state's  2^1*0- 

1 


2  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

gramme  of  education  with  this  and  other 
things  in  view.  He  had  just  returned 
from  Germany,  where  he  had  seen  vast 
changes  taking  place  and  an  entire  nation 
being  educated  into  an  efficiency  which 
was  at  once  wonderful  as  an  exhibition 
of  what  could  be  done  in  this  respect  and 
strildng  in  its  personal  and  commercial  re- 
sults. He  saw  a  village  which  he  had  seen 
some  j^ears  before  as  a  quiet  and  rural  com- 
munity transformed  into  a  vigorous,  active, 
commercial  center  with  the  world-view  of 
commerce  and  industry.  He  saw  young  per- 
sons whom  he  had  known  as  young  country 
children  exhibiting  all  the  natural  character- 
istics of  such  a  class  in  Germany  (a  very  dif- 
ferent thing,  by  the  way,  from  the  similar 
class  in  America) ,  changed  into  alert  persons 
whose  grasp  upon  themselves  was  hardly  less 
amazing  than  the  nation's  grasp  upon  its  in- 
dustrial self-consciousness  and  commercial  self - 
organization.  Both  these  things  so  impressed 
him  that,  knowing  the  listlessness  and  waste  of 
American  life,  especially  on  its  educational 
side,  coincident  with  the  overwhelming  Ameri- 
can passion  for  education,  especially  public 
education,  he  urged  the  adoption  of  German 
methods  or  at  least  the  mastery  of  the  German 


INTRODUCTION  3 

idea  with  a  view  to  securing  like  results  in 
America. 

Speaking  broadly,  the  address  was  received 
with  mild  amusement  and  the  public  comment 
which  was  made  upon  it  was  in  the  nature  of 
ridicule  that  anybody  could  ever  excel  Ameri- 
can zeal,  American  adaptability  and  American 
genius.  One  journal  suggested  that  the 
speaker  would  better  stop  his  foolish  aping  of 
European  ideas  and  become  a  real  American. 
Since  that  time,  however,  the  progress  of  Ger- 
many in  the  commercial  history  of  the  world 
has  so  arrested  attention  in  America  that  there 
is  now  an  almost  equally  stupid  and  insensate 
acceptance  of  certain  ideas  of  German  origin 
as  there  was  once  contemptuous  rejection  of 
them.  The  fundamental  differences  between 
Germany  and  America  and  the  equally  funda- 
mental differences  between  the  social  organ- 
ization of  the  German  and  the  American  mind, 
are  being  ignored  in  the  haste  for  industrial 
education,  so  that  presently  we  shall  be  won- 
dering just  why  we  do  not  get  the  results  in 
America  that  they  get  in  Germany.  And  then 
we  shall  set  about  finding  tlie  true  way. 

It  was,  however,  on  the  personal  side  that 
these  phenomena  made  the  deepest  impression 
upon  him.     He  saw  individuals   rise   in   the 


'4>  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

scale  of  efficiency,  self -organization  and  self- 
expenditure,  which  was  the  most  striking  ef- 
fect of  the  whole  business.  He  saw  in  indi- 
viduals an  expansion  of  mental  horizon  which 
clearly  showed  that  the  juvenile  mind  can 
work  at  a  pressure,  without  loss  of  strength, 
health  or  diminution  of  any  power  or  physi- 
cal capacity  which  is  i)ractically  unknown  in 
America.  And  he  saw  these  results  in  per- 
sons who  could  not  in  the  slightest  degree  bs 
called  unusual,  in  capability,  antecedents  or 
op23ortunity.  He  saw  children  not  only  in 
Germany,  but  in  Belgium,  Holland  and  other 
countries  in  northern  Europe  do  an  amount 
of  work  and  assimilate  a  fund  of  knowledge 
at  an  early  age  which  makes  the  achievements 
of  the  average  school  child  in  America  seem 
foolishness  and  waste.  He  resolved  to  try  ex- 
periments in  this  direction  himself  and  for 
many  years  now  has  been  in  the  course  of  his 
vocation  as  a  preacher  and  pastor  also  teaching 
young  people  from  very  young  children  to 
students  in  college  in  almost  all  branches  re- 
quired for  admission  to  American  colleges. 
The  results  have  been  surprising  beyond 
words.  These  young  people,  almost  seventy 
in  number,  have  responded  to  an  intensive 
treatment  in  instruction  and  guidance,  in  a. 
way  which  shows  that  the  waste  in  the  aver- 


INTRODUCTION  5 

age  American  child's  life  is  something  simply 
astounding.  It  proves  to  him  heyond  all 
doubt,  that  on  the  side  of  personal  efficiency, 
American  education  is  one  of  the  most  waste- 
ful things  in  the  whole  American  organizatiiMV 
of  life.  It  seems  to  prove  that  from  three  to 
five  years  of  life  are  lost  to  American  young 
people,  simply  because  they  are  not  trained 
for  large  results  in  a  large  way  and  required 
to  undertake  tasks  commensurate  witli  their 
abilities.  It  seems  to  show  that  while  there 
are  undoubted  differences  in  children  arising 
from  their  antecedents,  intellectual  ancestry 
and  environment,  on  the  whole,  these  are  neg- 
ligible in  the  final  result  if  you  get  a  right 
method  and  make  a  large  enough  demand  and 
arouse  the  necessary  interest  and  exert  the  re- 
quired force  to  get  the  result.  This  is  a  loss 
of  years  of  life,  the  amount  of  which  is  be- 
yond computation.  It  takes  years  out  of  the 
life  of  people,  makes  waste  in  productiveness, 
happiness  and  effectiveness  in  mature  life, 
which  one,  who  has  not  thought  tlic  matter 
through,  would  hardly  imagine  to  he  the  case. 
The  evidence  of  tlic  truth  of  tliis  indictment 
of  our  public  education  can  be  had  on  the 
most  casual  inquiry.  ^Vsk  any  well-informed 
parent  about  his  cliildren's  progress  in  scliool 
and  you  will  get  at  once  a  cry  of  discontent 


6  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

and  helpless  protest.  Such  protests,  in  the 
shape  of  letters  of  inquiry  about  the  subject- 
matter  of  this  book,  are  in  my  possession  by 
the  hundreds.  They  come  from  all  sorts  of 
people,  from  college  professors  to  the  street 
laborers.  They  come  from  persons  in  all 
walks  of  life,  from  rich  men  and  poor  men. 
But  all  these  people  have  one  element  in  com- 
mon. They  are  interested  in  the  intellectual 
growth  and  development  of  their  children  and 
are  anxious  to  send  out  into  the  world  effec- 
tive and  thoroughly  equipped  persons.  Some- 
times the  interest  arises  from  the  remem- 
brance of  privileges  which  the  parents 
themselves  did  not  enjoy.  Sometimes  it  arises 
from  the  consciousness  of  the  neglect  of  pa- 
rental duty  in  the  matter  of  the  children's  edu- 
cation. Sometimes  it  is  the  sincere  and  help- 
less anxiety  arising  from  the  plain  evidence, 
daily  before  the  parents,  that  the  young  peo- 
ple are  not  only  not  making  any  real  progress 
but  are  forming  habits  which  either  mean  a 
fearful  task  to  overcome  in  the  future  or  a 
hopeless  handicap  in  the  race  of  life.  The 
one  thing  about  them  all  is,  that  they  see  -vnth 
more  or  less  clearness  that  the  education  on 
which  we  spend  so  much  money  and  about: 
which  we  boast  so  loudly  and  about  which  w(i 
are  in  such  deadly  earnest  as  communities  and 


INTRODUCTION  7 

SO  Indifferent  as  individuals,  is  a  fearfully 
wasteful  and  costly  process.  And  in  noth- 
ing more  costly  than  in  tlie  loss  to  tlie  mental 
habits  and  personal  intellectual  ideals  of  the 
young  people  themselves.  We  could  possibly 
endure  it  if  it  did  no  good.  But  it  does  not 
stop  there ;  it  is  demoralizing  the  mental  habits^ 
of  the  nation. 

If  further  testimony  is  necessary,  ask  any 
mature  and  capable  teacher  who  has  watched 
the  progress  of  the  public  schools  in  the  last 
twenty  years.  The  teacher  so  addressed  will 
tell  you  in  plain  terms,  that  while  the  teachers 
are  doing  the  best  they  can  under  the  circum- 
stances, the  results  are  steadily  more  discour- 
aging, if  any  high  and  thorough  standard  is 
taken  into  consideration.  He  will  tell  you 
that  the  capacity  for  steady  and  sustained 
thought  on  the  part  of  pupils  seems  to  grow 
less  instead  of  more.  He  will  tell  you  that 
the  disposition  to  avoid  anything  difficult  and 
calling  for  effort,  especially  disagreeable  ef- 
fort, grows  stronger  and  that  committees  and 
faculties  alike  are  being  forced  to  yield  to  this 
disposition,  thus  controlling  public  eilucation. 
Rare  is  the  community  that  will  sustain  any 
public  superintendent  or  school  committee  in 
any  move  that  will  raise  the  standard  and 
make    attainment    of    graduation,    that    i'liiis 


8  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

fatuus  of  our  educational  system,  more  diffi- 
cult. The  quality  of  some  of  the  work  ac- 
cepted toward  a  high  school  degree,  for 
examj^le,  in  some  of  the  cities  in  INIassachu- 
setts,  is  simply  ludicrous.  A  high  school  di- 
ploma may  mean  that  the  child  receiving  it 
has  had  some  real  contact  with  a  strictly  intel- 
lectual process.  But  for  the  most  part  it  does 
not  mean  anything  of  the  sort.  This  does  not 
require  any  proof.  Simple  inquiry  anj^vhere 
will  reveal  it  as  a  fact. 

Following  this  line  one  step  higher  up,  we 
come  to  college  education.  The  well-known 
discontent  now  being  frankly  acknowledged 
by  the  presidents  of  all  American  colleges 
with  the  intellectual  caliber  of  their  graduates 
is  the  logical  outcome  of  a  process  which  be- 
gins in  the  lowest  grades.  That  need  not  be 
discussed  here.  But  a  result  in  American 
life  arising  from  it  may  be  considered  in  a 
few  paragraphs.  The  decline  in  respect  for 
scholarsliip,  especially  scholarship  which  has 
nothing  to  do  with  commercial  productive- 
ness, is  an  effect  in  American  hfe  the  full 
meaning  of  which  many  persons  do  not  seem 
to  comprehend  very  clearly.  It  means  a 
lower  type  of  civilization,  it  means  a  lower 
ideal  of  life  and  it  means  a  substantial  sur- 
render of  the  permanent  agencies  of  human 


INTRODUCTION  9 

liapiDiness,  because  it  is  taking  out  of  the 
life  of  the  nation  the  one  thing  "which  makes 
more  for  happiness  than  any  other  single  ele- 
ment, namely,  capable  self-organization.  One 
needs  only  to  look  about  and  o])serve  tlie  vast 
number  of  persons  who,  reaching  middle  life, 
have  no  momentum  in  any  direction.  They 
seem  to  exist  from  day  to  day.  They  liave 
no  vital  interests,  no  mental  reserves  which 
make  it  possible  for  them  to  live,  except  by 
constant  dynamic  injections  of  excitement  or 
amusement  from  without.  Xothing  shows 
this  more  than  the  amusements  which  are  most 
flourisliing.  To  ask  a  group  of  people  to 
spend  an  evening  together,  with  only  their 
brain  power,  their  varied  intellectual  interests, 
to  entertain  then^  and  the  comparison  of  their 
aims  and  purposes  and  experiences  to  furnish 
pleasure,  is  to  risk  an  evening  of  disastrous 
boredom  for  almost  everybody  involved. 
Tliis  also  is  a  common  knowledge.  Does  it  not 
sometimes  impress  all  of  us  to  wliat  idiotic 
tilings,  as  well-bred  ])eople  and  as  persons  who 
are  supposed  to  have  liad  some  contact  with 
the  intellectual  treasures  of  the  world,  I  mean 
now  its  exciting  and  interesting  treasures  of 
which  there  are  multitudes,  we  give  ourselves? 
And  have  we  not  often  gone  liomc.  glad 
enough  to  have  seen  our  friends,   but  thor- 


10  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

oughly  ashamed  of  the  manner  in  which  we 
spent  our  time  and  wondering  just  what  the 
reason  is  we  keep  on  doing  these  things  in  tliis 
way? 

Now  the  fact  is,  this  is  simply  the  working 
out  of  the  thing  which  has  its  roots  far  back 
in  the  earlier  stages  of  education.  The  only 
things  intensive  about  American  life  at  the 
present  moment  are  amusement  and  money- 
making.  In  these,  undoubtedly,  we  are  in 
fearful  earnest.  A  baseball  game  is  a  joy- 
ous and  delightsome  sight,  especially  if  it  is 
a  good  game.  But  almost  any  baseball  game 
is  good  enough.  But  the  reflection  that 
thousands  of  people,  during  the  most  charm- 
ing and  delightful  season  of  the  year  go,  day 
after  day,  to  see  other  people  play  and  for 
hours  do  absolutely  nothing  themselves,  but 
see  other  people  doing  things,  is  one  of  the 
most  curious  commentaries  on  contemporary 
American  life.  Now  children  would  never  do 
this.  They  want  to  play  themselves  and  they 
do.  But  after  they  have  gone  through  the 
American  educational  mill — school,  college 
and  the  rest — they  are  content  to  sit  and  sit 
and  sit,  by  thousands,  for  hours  and  hours  and 
hours  and  do  nothing  but  see  other  people 
play!  We  call  ourselves  an  energetic  people! 
The  claim  is  pure  foolishness  in  the  light  of 


INTRODUCTION  11 

the  way  in  which  we  take  our  amusements,  the 
thousands  simply  doing  n<>t!li'lSL'  exercising 
no  faculties  of  their  own  of  mind  or  ho(Iy~aiuT 
adding  ahsolutely  nothing  (but  fat)  to  their 
own  equipment  for  the  fuller  years  of  life. 
There  is  a  healthy  reaction  coming  in  this  mat- 
ter of  which  we  see  signs.  But  for  the  most 
part  this  is  descriptive  of  American  life  in 
this  phase.  Commercially,  the  same  phenome- 
non is  most  conspicuous.  The  mad  race  for 
money,  without  capacity  to  enjoy  it  properly, 
when  secured,  is  still  our  outstanding  cliarac- 
teristic.  But  even  here,  it  must  be  confessed 
that  the  efficiency  which  our  conmierce  displays 
is  hardly  the  efficiency  which  commands  admi- 
ration. It  still  has  too  much  the  aspect  which 
makes  moral  scrutiny  a  source  of  uneasiness 
and  has  taken  as  its  most  recent  note  the  wide- 
spread demand  for  the  criminal  prosecution 
of  our  captains  of  industry.  But  this  is  a 
subject  by  itself. 

Now  the  influence  of  all  this  upon  the  })er- 
sonal  hfe  and  character  is  perfectly  plain. 
This  not  being  a  moral  treatise,  that  phase 
of  the  matter  will  not  be  discussed  here. 
Enough  to  say  that  the  final  result  is  a  long: 
type  of  civilization,  lessened  respect  for  the 
fine  and  permanent  things  of  life,  an  idealism 
that  is  bounded  by  the  stock  exchange  or  the 


12  THE  SCHOOL  IX  TITK  HOME 

musical  comedy,  a  culture  that  in  spite  of  no- 
table exce])ti()n.s  and  ^rcat  advances,  rests 
upon  private  initiative  almost  exclusively  and 
this  often  collaborated  with  the  criminal  inter- 
ests just  alluded  to.  The  place  where  all  this 
is  to  be  combated  is  in  the  sphere  of  child 
training.  It  is  in  the  creation  of  mental  hab- 
its, mental  outlook  and  mental  interests, 
which  will  automatically  make  this  type  of  de- 
velopment impossible..  It  is  in  a  programme 
of  intensive  development  for  young  children 
wliich  will  make  them  immune  from  the  tend- 
encies which  not  only  destroy  their  best 
capacities,  but  which  make  it  possible  for  them 
to  go  through  the  world  never  knowing  what 
they  have  missed  and  what  kind  of  a  world  it 
actually  is.  There  must  be  a  mind  fertiliza- 
tion, which  is,  at  the  same  time,  a  sterilization 
against  other  things.  There  must  be  the 
arousing  of  interests  which,  by  their  very  fire 
and  picturesqueness  and  enjoyment,  will 
make  the  rest  seem  tame  and  listless.  There 
must  be  such  a  linkage  of  real  and  substantial 
knowledge  and  the  process  of  gaining  it,  with 
deliglit  and  pleasure,  as  will  make  the  sense- 
less and  idiotic  tilings  offered  to  rational  be- 
ings for  amusement  seem  an  insult  to  the 
mind.  There  must  be  such  a  programme  and 
it  must  be   begun  in  the  home,   before  the 


INTRODUCTION  13 

school  life  begins,  which  will  assimilate  natu- 
rally the  best  things  offered  in  the  school  and 
by  natural  repulsion  leave  the  rest.  There 
must  be  such  a  cooperation  between  the  home 
and  the  school  as  will  secure  the  continuous 
education  of  parents  in  the  education  of  tlieir 
children,  tliat  will  make  for  the  continuous 
enrichment  of  the  intellectual  life  of  the  house- 
hold and  will  at  the  same  time  steadily  create 
new  interests,  as  new  knowledge  and  new  ex- 
periences are  ])rought  into  the  fellowship  of 
parents  and  children. 

So  much  for  the  actual  conditions.  Now 
for  some  concrete  examples  of  what  happened. 
The  earliest  experiments  were  made  in  my 
own  family  of  four  children,  now  aged,  re- 
spectively, a  girl  of  seventeen,  a  boy  sixteen, 
a  girl  twelve  and  a  boy  ten.  At  the  time  tliese 
plans  began  to  go  into  operation  the  two 
younger  children  were  not  born  and  tliere  ])e- 
ing  but  seventeen  montlis  lictwecn  the  two 
eldest,  the  plan  admitted  of  treating  botli  ex- 
actly alike.  These  two  were  admitted  to 
Radcliffe  and  Harvard  colleges,  the  girl  be- 
ing fifteen  and  tlie  boy  thirteen  and  a  half. 
Their  examination  papers  were  of  average, 
possibly  sliglitly  above  average  excellence, 
betraying  nothing  unusual  and  especially 
nothing    that    indicated    "prodigies."     They 


14  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

had  simply  arrived  several  years  earlier  than  is 
usual.  Two  years  of  their  college  life  have 
passed  and  their  standing  in  college  is,  with  an 
occasional  exception,  in  the  honor  list.  Both 
have  pursued  the  maximum  amount  of  work 
permitted  by  the  colleges,  the  boy  being  al- 
lowed to  take  six  courses  at  Harvard,  the  girl 
only  five  at  Radcliife.  They  are  in  good 
health  and  nothing  unusual  has  happened. 
No  vital  relation  which  ought  to  come  with 
college  life,  associations  or  interests,  has  been 
denied  them  and  they  have  secured  all  that 
could  be  expected  out  of  their  college  life. 
In  fact,  rather  more  as  I  should  judge.  I 
can  see  no  reason  for  altering  the  course  with 
the  two  younger  children,  both  of  whom  are  in 
the  Cambridge  High  and  Latin  School  and 
are  beginning  third  year  work.  They  will 
take  college  examinations  and  probably  be 
admitted  at  about  the  same  ages  as  their  older 
brother  and  sister.  There  has  been  no  crowd- 
ing. They  are  in  absolutely  perfect  health 
judged  by  ordinary  standards.  They  are  not 
children  of  exceptional  ability.  They  have 
been  subjects  of  exceptional  oversight  and 
care,  both  as  to  studies  and  health.  If  this  re- 
sidt  had  been  secured  with  one  child,  the  usual 
plea  of  an  "unusual  child"  might  possibly  be 


INTRODUCTION  15 

raised.  But  it  is  unthinkable  that  there 
should  be  four  "prodigies"  in  one  family!  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  all  such  talk  is  absurd.  The 
difference  is  one  of  method,  parental  interest 
and  care. 

Another  case  from  what  might  be  called 
the  opposite  social  pole  is  that  of  a  youth  whose 
father  was  a  street  laborer  with  whom  I  be- 
came acquainted  because  he  worked  in  front 
of  my  house  and  I  got  into  the  habit  of  speak- 
ing with  him  as  I  passed  out  of  my  gate  in  the 
morning.  One  day  he  confided  to  me  his 
anxiety  about  his  boy  in  the  grammar  school, 
who  was  not  doing  well.  I  called  at  the  school, 
got  acquainted  with  the  boy,  his  hal)its  and 
his  possibilities.  He  was  about  to  be  denied 
promotion  for  neglect  of  his  work  and  bad 
behavior.  I  got  him  interested  in  me,  planned 
his  work  for  the  following  summer,  gave  up 
a  part  of  my  vacation  to  see  that  he  did  it, 
instructed  his  parents  as  to  my  requirements 
for  study  and  habits,  and  the  following  Sep- 
tember he  took  admissions  for  the  high  school 
into  which  he  was  admitted,  in  wliicli  he  made 
an  excellent  record,  from  which  he  passed  into 
a  law  school  and  is  now  a  successful  practicing 
lawyer.  His  record  in  llie  hiw  school  was  ex- 
cellent.    He    has     since     developed    literary 


16  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

habits  and  will  be  a  useful  and  effective  mem- 
ber of  his  profession.  And  he  is  a  gentle- 
man! 

Still  another  case  is  that  of  a  girl  in  whom 
I  became  interested  when  she  was  ten.  Her 
parents,  when  I  indicated  what  I  thought  she 
might  do,  strongly  deprecated  any  attempt 
to  get  her  to  college  and  advised  me  to  give 
the  attention  to  an  older  sister.  They  gave 
absolutely  no  aid  in  the  matter.  But  the  girl 
became  interested,  a2:)plied  herself,  developed 
remarkable  aptitude  for  making  quick  infer- 
ences and  utilizing  her  knowledge,  entered 
high  school,  made  a  good  record  and  gradu- 
ated in  the  first  twenty  in  her  class  in  college. 
Her  whole  career  was  a  struggle  and  against 
an  absolutely  hostile  environment,  since  the  do- 
mestic life  of  the  home  was  not  happy  and  the 
girl  got  no  assistance  there.  She  is  now  a 
useful  and  successful  teacher. 

An  unusual  case  was  that  of  a  boy  who  had 
some  rather  severe  physical  infirmities,  but 
whose  interest  being  aroused,  set  to  work  tc 
overcome  these  and  other  natural  handicaps. 
I  got  into  touch  with  him  when  he  w^as  twelve. 
Between  that  age  and  seventeen  he  did  more 
w^ork  than  most  children  do  between  begin- 
ning school  and  twenty.  He  also  made  a 
good  college  record,  which  might  have  been 


INTRODUCTION  17 

brilliant  if  he  had  not  had  to  earn  a  part  of 
his  living  at  the  same  time.  This  boy  also  is 
in  the  law  and  is  known  among  jiis  assoeiates 
as  a  "student,"  a  man  whf)se  opinions  are  val- 
ued because  of  his  habits  of  application  and 
thoroughness. 

One  further  case  will  suffice.  It  was  the 
case  of  a  girl  whom  I  began  to  know  when 
she  was  about  twelve.  At  that  time  she  was 
supposed  to  be  "impossible"  from  the  stand- 
point of  study.  A  little  careful  guidance, 
stimulation  on  the  side  of  the  interests  which 
knowledge  properly  applied  arouses,  made  a 
transformation  which  was  little  short  of  won- 
derful. The  need  for  earning  her  livelihood 
took  her  prematurely  out  of  school,  but  she 
has  developed  literary  skill  and  knowledge 
and  M-rites  beautifully  and  earns  a  suitable  in- 
come with  her  pen.  I  have  no  doubt  whatever 
that  this  child,  had  she  come  under  M'ise  «^Tii(l- 
ance  at  an  early  age,  would  have  made  a 
brilliant  and  remarkable  figure. 

JNIore  recently,  I  advised  a  mother  with  her 
small  child  of  four  to  resist  the  temptation 
to  jiut  him  into  tlie  school  but  to  give  him  her 
own  attention.  I  urged  his  father  to  take,  as 
I  did,  his  meal  times  as  periods  for  discussion, 
for  fertilization,  for  the  interesting  of  his  cliild 
in  the  things  of  the  mind.     The   result   has 


18  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

been  overwhelming  to  the  parents  in  the  rapid 
assimilation  of  a  knowledge  of  history,  of  some 
forms  of  mathematics  and  a  variety  of  other 
things  usually  met  by  children  in  the  high 
school  period,  and  that  child  would  at  this  mo- 
ment, after  two  years  of  such  work,  find  the 
fifth,  or  even  the  sixth,  grade  stupid  and  a 
bore.  Imagine  a  child  that  has  been  told  the 
tales  of  Shakespeare  and  interested  in  the  plots 
and  counterplots  of  the  great  plays,  told 
the  thrilling  stories  of  Greek  history  and  able 
to  talk  about  them  on  the  factual  side,  being 
kept  in  a  fifth  grade  reader ! 

Now  in  all  these  cases  there  was  notliing 
abstruse,  terrifying  or  otherwise  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  average  parent.  In  fact,  the 
whole  thing  turned  ujDon  the  fidelity  of  the 
parents,  quite  as  much  as  upon  that  of  the 
children  when  the  children  were  young.  But 
in  cases  some  of  which  are  cited  above,  even 
with  conditions  wholly  unfavorable,  children 
were  enabled  to  do  three  and  four  times  the 
work,  in  a  third  or  half  the  time  usually  con- 
sumed by  school  children.  To  be  sure,  in  all 
these  cases  a  little  work  was  kept  up  through- 
out the  long  vacation,  one  of  the  absurdities 
of  American  life.  These  cliildren  did  not  for 
twelve  long  weeks  absolutely  forget  that  they 
had  brains,  which  must  work  and  wiiich  must 


INTRODUCTION  19 

be  kept  active  in  developing  habits  of  obser- 
vation, attention  and  self-control. 

Now  it  is  impossible  to  assume  that  all  these 
children  had  some  unusual  qualities  not  com- 
mon to  most  children.  In  most  cases  they 
had  good  health.  Of  course  you  cannot  get 
full  work  from  a  sick  child.  Of  course  they, 
had  to  keep  regidar  hours  and  forego  a  good! 
deal  of  what  is  called  the  social  life  of  young 
people.  But  in  this,  as  in  all  other  things,  a 
choice  has  to  be  made.  It  is  a  question  of 
what  one  desires  most.  Young  people  cannot 
go  out  to  parties  anH  dance  half  the  night  and 
have  their  brains  and  bodies  in  condition  for 
capable  and  effective  work  the  next  day. 
They  cannot  have  their  minds  filled  with  a 
vast  variety  of  "social"  nonsense  and  still 
keep  it  fresh  for  habitation  by  higher  things. 
When  that  fact  is  clearly  brought  to  the  at- 
tention of  a  young  person  and  the  right  choice 
is  made,  half  the  battle  is  won.  But  that  also 
is  another  question. 

The  methods  or  rather  the  principles,  wliicli 
have  governed  in  all  these  cases  were  the  same. 
They  are  indicated  not  ])rcciscly,  but  gener- 
ally, in  the  following  cliai)tcrs.  The  first 
thing  to  be  secured  is  the  conviction  on  the 
part  of  parents  and  others  who  have  young 
children  in  charge,  that  there  is  capacity  and 


20  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

power  in  the  child,  which  only  needs  to  be  de- 
veloped, and  then  to  take  the  means  by  which 
that  development  can  be  secured.  Naturally 
there  is  no  arbitrary  method.  But  the  re- 
marks made  in  the  succeeding  chapters  will 
indicate  about  what  happened  and  where  the 
line  of  advance  starts.  There  are  in  these 
histories  elements  which  cannot  of  course  be 
made  public  but  which  I  wish  to  assure  my 
readers  if  they  knew  they  would  never  have 
another  contented  minute  with  the  present 
slipshod,  listless  and  machine  methods  by 
which  the  thousands  of  our  children  are  given 
what  is  called  their  "education."  The  pa- 
rental attitude,  and  next  to  that  the  teacher's 
attitude  toward  the  higher  things  of  the  mind, 
is  of  paramount  importance  especially  in 
young  children.  The  often  contemptuous  in- 
difference with  which  mature  people  treat  the 
presence  of  children  in  their  habits,  manners 
and  conversation  is  to  me  one  of  the  paralyz- 
ing wonders  of  contemporary  life.  This  is 
especially  observable  in  matters  of  speech  and 
the  use  of  the  mother  tongue.  But  it  is 
hardly  less  true  in  other  important  matters. 

Of  course  this  is  not  academic  and  peda^ 
gogical.  As  stated,  this  is  not  the  work  of  an 
"educator."  It  may  interest  persons  who 
have  an  academic  interest  in  this  matter,  thai 


INTRODUCTION  21 

I  could,  if  it  had  been  worth  while,  have 
placed  abundant  footnotes  and  references 
for  many  things,  in  connection  with  the  ideas 
which  are  laid  down  in  the  chapters  following. 
Perhaps  some  time  later,  I  shall  write  a  small 
book  with  that  purpose  specifically  in  mind. 
But  as  this  is  manifestly  a  "tendenz-schrift" 
and  has  in  view  the  purpose  of  arousement  of 
interest  in  the  thing  discussed,  the  academic 
discussion  of  the  problem  may  well  be  left  out. 
I  propose  also  later  to  publish  a  small  ])ook, 
in  which  a  programme  is  particularly  indicated 
which  may  not  be  without  its  uses.  But  for 
the  present  I  wish  merely  to  secure  assent  to 
certain  ideas,  which  I  believe  generally  ac- 
cepted and  the  practice  of  the  achievement  of 
which,  widely  adopted,  will  save  from  three  to 
five  years  of  school  life  for  the  ordinary  child 
and  add  immeasurably  to  the  happiness,  use- 
fulness and  effective  self-direction  of  many 
human  beings. 


I  have  no  remembrance  of  the  time  when  I  began 
to  learn  Greek.  I  have  been  told  that  it  was  when  I 
was  three  years  old.  My  earliest  recollection  on  the 
subject  is  that  of  committing  to  memory  what  my 
father  termed  vocables,  being  lists  of  common  Greek 
words  with  their  signification  in  English  which  he 
wrote  out  for  me  on  cards.  Of  grammar  until  some 
years  later  I  learned  no  more  than  the  inflections  of 
nouns  and  verbs,  but  after  a  course  of  vocables  pro- 
ceeded at  once  to  translation ;  and  I  faintly  remember 
going  through  ^sop's  Fables,  the  first  Greek  book 
which  I  read.  The  Anabasis,  which  I  remember  bet- 
ter, was  the  second.  I  leamt  no  Latin  till  my  eighth 
year.  At  that  time  I  had  read  under  my  father's 
tuition  a  number  of  Greek  prose  authors  among 
whom  I  remember,  the  whole  of  Herodotus  and  of 
Xenophon's  Cyropasdia  and  Memorials  of  Socrates ; 
some  of  the  lives  of  the  philosophers  by  Diogenes 
Laertius ;  part  of  Lucian  and  Isocrates  Ad  Demoni- 
cum  and  Ad  Nicoclem. 

— John  Stuart  Mill.     Autobiography. 


II 

LANGUAGE  THE  INSTRUMENT  OF 
KNOWLEDGE 

Language  is  the  tool  by  which  all  knowl- 
edge is  acquired.  There  are  persons  who  can 
make  themselves  understood  and  can  convey 
ideas  by  signs  and  motions  of  various  kinds, 
but  the  usual  medium  for  conveying  ideas  is 
language.  The  earliest  form  in  which  lan- 
guage begins  to  assert  its  influence  upon  tlic 
human  mind  is  in  the  spoken  tongue.  It  is 
hardly  an  accident  that  we  si)eak  of  the 
"mother"  tongue.  It  is  in  the  liome  that  I  lie 
most  durable  habits  of  speech  are  ac(|uired 
and  generally  speaking  it  is  in  the  home  that 
whatever  style  develops  in  mature  life  has 
its  origin.  But  it  is  not  merely  the  fact  that 
language  and  speech  as  its  oral  form  is  tlie 
effective  and  most  powerful  tool  of  knowl- 
edge; it  also  affects  a  great  many  other 
things.  It  is  not  enough  that  a  word  he 
spoken.  It  makes  a  great  deal  of  difference 
how  it  is  sjioken.  The  i)roper  vocalization  of 
words  has  an  effect  upon  children  wliich  is 
often,    one    may    say    generally,    overlooked. 

23 


24  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

Almost  everybody  is  fond  of  repeating  the 
baby's  efforts  to  talk  and  "baby  talk"  lingers 
in  many  homes  an  innocent  but  costly  pleas- 
ure, for  the  parents  and  the  children  alike. 
There  are  many  persons  of  mature  age  at  this 
moment  who  will  never  pronounce  certain 
words  proj^erly,  since  they  became  accustomed 
to  a  false  pronunciation  in  childhood,  because 
somebody  thought  it  was  "cute."  There  are 
many  persons  who  will  never  get  over  certain 
false  associations  of  ideas,  because  somebody 
thought  it  was  very  amusing  and  funny  to  see 
the  child  mixing  up  things  in  such  a  beauti- 
fully childlike  way! 

Let  me  call  attention  to  a  contrast  at  this 
point  which  may  suggest  what  this  particular 
chapter  has  to  explain.  What  parent,  if  he 
discovered  some  physical  disability  in  the 
speech  of  a  young  child  which  meant  imper- 
fect vocalization,  like  lisping,  for  example,  or 
stuttering,  would  not  make  haste  to  employ 
every  possible  means  to  secure  the  early  cor- 
rection of  the  evil?  Or  again,  suppose  some 
father  discovered  that  his  child  Imd  a  mal- 
formation of  one  or  both  feet,  which  meant,  if 
unattended  to,  that  the  child  would  never  walk 
straight  or  stand  erect?  Can  we  imagine  that 
this  defect  would  be  ignored,  glossed  over  and 
forgotten  simply  because  for  the  moment  it 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE      25 

caused  no  discomfort  or  involved  no  pain? 
Or  once  again,  let  us  suppose  tliat  j)arents 
found  out  that  the  sight  of  a  cliild  was  im- 
paired and  that  the  j^rompt  attention  of  some 
specialist  in  this  department  meant  the  com- 
plete restoration  of  sight,  hy  wise  obser\ing 
of  the  defect  and  the  careful  training  and 
guiding  of  the  eyes  from  misuse  and  misdi- 
rection. Is  it  thinkable,  in  any  rational  house- 
hold, that  this  matter  woidd  be  left  witliout 
attention  and  without  the  employment  of 
every  possible  means  to  secure  the  best  results 
for  correct  sight  and  sound,  healthy  eyes?  To 
ask  all  these  questions  is  to  answer  them.  The 
great-  advance  in  America,  of  supervision  in 
the  public  schools  and  elsewhere  of  children 
in  these  respects  shows  how  strong  lias  become 
the  appreciation  of  the  importance  of  deaUng 
with  these  and  all  defects  promptly  and  at 
the  earliest  period  possible. 

Pass  now  from  the  region  of  ])hysieal  devel- 
opment into  the  region  of  the  mental  life  and 
contrast  the  method  of  j^rocedure.  A  child 
makes,  through  undeveloj)e{l  organs,  some 
funny  mistake  in  the  vocalization  of  a  word. 
Everybody  laughs  and  the  child  is  ])rom])tly 
encouraged  to  make  the  same  mistake  over 
again.  Not  only  is  the  child  deceived  as  to 
the  fact  concerning  that  partienlai-  tiling,  but 


26  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

its  ears  are  misled  at  the  same  time.  In  that 
laugh,  left  without  any  further  attention, 
three  tilings  happened.  The  cliild  was  de- 
ceived about  the  thing  itself,  interpreting  the 
laugh  as  aj^proval;  the  ears  of  the  child  were 
misled,  interpreting  the  sound  it  heard  as  a  cor- 
rect one  and  therefore  to  be  repeated  in  that 
connection,  and  there  was  integrated  into  the 
mind  of  the  child  an  error  which  either  had 
to  remain  there  or  later  be  expelled  by  a  spe- 
cial process.  A  very  large  fraction  of  the 
entire  process  of  what  we  call  elementary  edu- 
cation is  taken  up  in  this  business  of  the  ex- 
pulsion of  errors  which  have  been  carelessly 
permitted  to  become  integrated  in  the  minds 
of  children.  Let  this  process  now  go  on  for 
several  years.  And  by  and  by,  you  have  just 
what  you  find  in  the  vast  majority  of  the  chil- 
dren who  coine  to  a  public  school,  a  mass  of 
thoroughly  false  ideas  and  habits  about  speech, 
vocalization  and  language  generally  and  what 
is  even  more  disastrous  the  feeling  that  proper 
speech,  careful  vocalization  and  accuracy  in 
diction  are  something  unusual,  peculiar  if  not 
wholly  undesirable.  Note  the  result  in  ahiiost 
any  schoolroom,  when  a  child  gifted  in  ac- 
curate speech,  rises,  and  you  will  see  either 
amazement  that  such  a  thing  is  possible  and 
wonderment  at  just  what  it  all  means,  or  lii- 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE      27 

larious  amusement  over  wliat  seems  to  them, 
ignorance  of  the  real  truth,  mannerism  in  talk- 
ing. 

Nor  is  tliis  attitude  confined  to  the  scliool. 
Let  a  man  be  careful  and  ])recise,  even  though 
not  bookish,  in  his  habits  of  speech  in  any 
general  assembly  of  men  and  he  is  generally 
put  down  as  a  "grind"  or  some  sort  of  a  person 
who  must  be  in  "intellectual  pursuits."  There 
seems  abnost  to  be  a  demand  for  a  corru])ted 
use  of  the  language  to  convince  ])eo})le  that 
you  are  "practical"  and  "in  it"  and  otherwise 
en  rajjport  with  the  things  of  the  age.  In 
fact,  not  to  use  the  slang  of  the  time,  indi- 
cates to  the  vast  majority  of  your  fellows  that 
somehow  you  do  not  belong  to  the  "crowd." 
An  ordinary  conversation  in  any  public  j)lace 
would  be  unintelligible  to  a  man  who  had  ac- 
quired English  only  from  books,  in  another 
land,  because  so  infused  with  technical  slang 
of  one  kind  and  another  which  is  intelligible 
only  in  our  country.  Coming  across  llu- 
ocean  one  winter,  I  became  accjuaintcd  with 
a  German  commercial  agent,  who  had  tran- 
scribed five  hundred  and  sixty  such  expres- 
sions and  attached  definitions  and  exami)Ies  of 
their  usage  to  the  same,  in  oidcr  to  make  him- 
self agreeable  to  liis  business  associates  on 
this  side  of  the  water!     lie  had  found  that 


28  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

the  mastery  of  this  corruj)tion  of  the  Enghsh 
tongue  was  a  commercial  asset  which  he  could 
not  neglect.  Read  the  newspaper  account  of 
a  ball  game  or  in  fact  any  one  of  the  popular 
American  sports  and  you  will  find  yourself  at 
once  in  a  teiTa  incognita  unless  you  happen  to 
be  familiar  with  the  particular  sport  of  which 
you  are  reading.  I  see  my  reader  smile  as 
he  reads  this.  But  it  is  no  smiling  matter 
for  his  boy  or  girl  when  he  strikes  his  English 
work  in  the  high  school  or  a  college  admission 
paper!  Nor  is  it  a  smiling  matter  for  him 
when  the  report  of  failure  comes  from  the  col- 
lege office! 

The  point,  at  this  stage,  which  I  wish  to 
make  is,  that  fr9m  the  earliest  moment  we 
seem  to  make  every  provision  possible  for  per- 
fection of  the  physical  structure  in  which  the 
mind  operates  and  carelessly  leave  till  we  are 
forced  to  deal  with  it,  the  habits  and  activities 
of  the  mind  itself.  "But  what  do  you  want 
me  to  do  with  my  baby?"  saj^s  some  irate  man 
who  thinks  I  am  going  to  demand  a  philo- 
sophical thesis  from  the  baby  in  its  cradle. 
This  is  what  I  w^ant  him  to  do.  If  he  sees  a  de- 
fective eye  I  want  him  to  get  it  mended.  If 
he  sees  a  defective  word  I  want  that  mended, 
too.     If  he  sees  a  foot  malformed,  I  want  him 


THE  IXSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE      29 

to  employ  his  time  and  strength  and  money  to 
see  that  it  is  correeted.  If  he  sees  a  false 
habit  of  si:)eech  developing  and  a  false  n^te 
being  integrated  into  the  mentality  of  his  ehild, 
I  want  him  to  correct  that  too.  When  one 
of  my  own  children  was  small  I  noticed  a 
certain  tendency  to  make  bad  work  of  a  cer- 
tain combination  of  consonants.  Thereafter 
daily,  for  several  weeks,  as  a  playful  exercise 
with  this  baby,  I  repeated  in  its  ear  tlie  i)r()])er 
vocalization  of  that  combination  and  presently 
the  confusion  disappeared.  I^eft  alone,  that 
habit  would  have  become  fixed.  It  ^v()^ll(l 
have  affected  the  spelling  of  that  particular 
combination  as  it  appeared  in  words.  It 
would  have  confused  the  eye  every  time  it 
saw  them,  because  it  would  have  been  inhar- 
monious with  the  sound  which  lingered  in  the 
ears  and  which  had  been  made  domiciliary  in 
the  tongue.  That  slight  defect  might  have 
operated  for  confusion,  for  distress  and  for 
blunder  in  a  hundred  different  ways  of  whicli 
I  do  not  even  know.  IJut  simj)ly  lisping  into 
the  babj^'s  ear  daily,  as  a  matter  of  jjlayfid 
intercourse,  the  thing  was  eliml/iated.  >'Aj)|)ly 
that  principle  to  the  use  of  words.  i\pply  it 
to  habits  of  correct  speech  .iiid  the  use  .ind 
power  of  approach  to  the  mother  tongue  in 


80  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

the  ordinary  child  in  the  first  three  or  four 
years  of  hfe  and  it  will  produce  something 

^  which  will  seem  hke  a  dream. 

«  ^  You  observe,  of  course,  that  this  training 
begins  not  with  the  child  but  with  the  person 
or  persons  who  have  the  child  in  charge.  In 
general,  it  means  the  parents.  But  most  par- 
ents never  think  of  this  matter  at  all  and  I 
have  often  been  upbraided  by  indignant  per- 
sons who  said  I  was  destroying  the  childhood 
of  my  children,  because  I  did  not  let  them 
master  all  sorts  of  false  notions  about  their 
mother  tongue.  Because  I  did  not  let  their 
mistakes  go  uncorrected,  because  I  refused  to 
use  slang  with  them  in  the  formative  period  of 
their  lives,  because  I  insisted  that  when  they 
misused  a  word  or  used  a  false  order  of  words, 
they  should  instantly  correct  both,  it  was  said 
I  was  making  an  unnatural  life  for  the  cliil- 
dren.  They  said  it  was  unnatural  for  chil- 
dren to  do  these  things.  They  might  as  well 
have  insisted  that  it  was  umiatural  and  wrong 
to  correct  defective  vision  or  to  operate  on  a 
clubfoot ! 

Now  what  makes  all  this  important  is  what 
comes  of  it.  Language  as  I  have  said  is  the 
tool  of  knowledge.  It  is  the  instrument  by 
which  we  gain  and  garner  information,  by 
which  we  coordinate  what  we  know  and  make 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE    ;  2,11 

inferences  and  express  results.  But  if  you 
blunt  the  tool,  not  to  say  destroy  it,  before 
you  begin  to  use  it,  how  are  you  ever  to  get 
knowledge  in  any  proper  or  real  sense? 
Everytliing  depends  upon  this  tool.  The 
mastery  of  a  proper  use  of  the  mother  tongue 
is  the  first  and  last  requisite  of  sound  and  ex- 
tensive mental  development.  Language  is 
the  key  to  everything  that  pertains  to  human 
life.  Once  get  a  language  and  you  liave  the 
key  to  manners,  civilization,  habits,  custonis, 
history  and  all  the  complex  and  fascinating 
story  of  humanity.  Because  you  get  all  these 
things  by  reading  about  them,  and  to  read 
you  must  know  the  language  and  you  must 
know  it  accurately  and  extensively  and  he  able 
to  follow  the  masters  of  it  who  have  enilxxlied 
their  great  ideas  in  literature.  That  i)r()cess 
begins  almost  at  the  cradle.  It  begins  by  cul- 
tivating accuracy  and  skill  in  the  use  of  the 
tongue.  It  begins  by  striking  at  and  out, 
every  false  thing,  the  moment  it  aj)j)eais. 
Isn't  it  as  imj^ortant  to  prevent  the  niallornia- 
tion  of  the  mind,  as  the  maHnrniation  ol'  a 
foot?  Isn't  it  just  as  necessary  to  prevent 
false  use  of  the  thinking  as  ol"  the  seeing 
power  ?  * 

1  EiiicrsoM  has  told  in  liis  nwn  cxcrllnil  way  what  tlio  signirt- 
cance  of  language   is   in    nialtrrs    Ik-voiuI   c-vrn    lliosc   which    I 


32  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

Perhaps  I  may  be  permitted,  at  this  point, 
to  digress  a  little  and  say  a  word  on  the  subject 
of  the  study  of  other  languages  than  the 
mother  tongue.  One  of  the  things  that  in- 
terested me  greatly  in  the  Low  Countries  was 
the  facility  with  wliich  children  spoke  four 
or  five  languages.  I  used  occasionally  to  get 
children  to  sit  down  and  say  the  same  thing  for 
me  in  several  languages,  to  see  whether  they 
made  the  shadings  incident  to  varying  racial 
development  and  interest,  and  I  was  often  sur- 
prised to  see  the  skill,  with  which  the  thing 
was  done.  Now  of  course  in  the  Low  Coun- 
tries, the  intermixture  of  races  makes  it  ab- 
solutely necessary  for  every  child  to  master 
several  languages  in  order  to  do  business  with 
the  contemporary  life  around  it.  But  what 
struck  me  most  was  that  the  cross- fertiliza- 
tion of  thought,  produced  by  this  inter-lingual 
development,  was  even  more  important  than 
the  tiling  itself.  It  convinced  me  that  linguis- 
tic study  has  in  it  more  power  for  the  devel- 
opment of  mental  force  and  freedom  than  any 

have  already  indicated.  He  says:  "Language  is  made  up  of 
the  spoils  of  all  actions,  trades,  arts,  games  of  men.  Every 
word  is  a  metaphor  borrowed  from  some  natural  or  mechanical, 
agricultural  or  nautical  process.  The  poorest  speaker  is  like 
the  Indian  dressed  in  a  robe  furnished  by  half  a  dozen  ani- 
mals. It  is  like  our  marble  foot-slab  made  up  of  countless 
shells  and  exuviae  of  a  foreign  world." 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE      33 

other  kind  of  study.  It  convinced  nie  that 
the  dechne  of  the  classics  in  America,  (ireek 
and  Latin,  on  the  score  tliat  tliev  were  not 
"practical,"  is  a  species  of  foolishness,  which 
some  day  we  shall  <^'reatly  deplore  and  re«^ret 
having  permitted  the  driving  out  of  our  high 
schools  and  colleges,  the  reciuirements  along 
these  lines.  I  am  not  now  arguing  that 
Greek  shall  be  made  compulsory.  1  am  argu- 
ing, that  those  ])arents  who  yield  to  the  fool- 
ish clamor  against  the  classics,  on  the  ground 
that  they  are  not  practical,  do  not  know  what 
they  are  doing.  I  believe  that  the  reaction  upon 
the  English  tongue  and  its  com])rehension,  the 
reaction  upon  the  use  of  the  vernacular  itself 
for  the  commonest  uses  of  life  and,  especially, 
for  the  enjoyment  of  literature,  is  a  compen- 
sation from  classical  study,  which  is  the  most 
practical  thing  possible  in  the  way  of  educa- 
tion. Of  course  it  is  not  as  easy  as  typewrit- 
ing and  stenography!  IJut  is  typewriting 
education?  I  beheve  in  some  high  schools,  it 
counts  as  much  as  Greek  for  a  liigh  school 
diploma!  AVhat  a  valuable  document  that 
sheet  must  be  in  such  cases! 

The  use  of  the  mother  tongue  is  the  most 
important  factor  of  the  whole  educational 
process.  It  is  the  means,  by  which  entrance  is 
made  into  the  vast  world  of  books.     Once  that 


34  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

world  is  entered,  the  novice  knowing  his  tool 
and  having  the  tool  properly  edged  and  sharp- 
ened, he  is  brought  at  once  into  contact,  possi- 
ble in  no  other  way,  with  the  vast  stores  of 
knowledge.  And  observe,  when  you  have 
trained  a  child  in  good  English  and  prevented 
it  from  learning  a  great  mass  of  bad  English, 
when  you  have  spent  its  earliest  years  familiar- 
izing it  with  a  correct  and  extensive  vocabu- 
lary, you  have  given  it  access  to  a  great  many 
things  from  which  the  other  process  automat- 
ically excludes  it.  Now  there  are  great 
treasures  in  the  libraries,  which  even  young 
children  would  enjoy  if  they  only  had  the  tool 
By  which  they  could  use  them.  But  their 
"club"  minds  having  been  neglected,  having 
been  encouraged  because  it  was  "cute"  and 
"pretty"  and  ministered  to  the  vanity  and 
indolence  of  the  j^arents,  to  do  nothing  about 
it,  to  misuse,  misunderstand  or  absolutely  to 
know  nothing  at  all  of  many  common  things, 
they  are  automatically  excluded  from  this 
world.  That  means  the  delimitation  of  their 
activities,  almost  from  the  start.  Sometimes 
it  means  a  permanent  exclusion  from  some  of 
the  choicest  delights  of  life.  For  taste,  like 
everything  else  develops  early,  and  taste  in  lit- 
erature and  knowledge  and  things  intellectual 
requires  very  careful  and  exacting  attention 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE      3.5 

in  tlie  early  stages.  Who  does  not  recall  the 
hatred  for  some  branches  which  was  bred  in 
him  by  the  stupid  blundering  person  who  was 
their  titular  representative?  1  had  myself  ex- 
actly this  experience  with  mathematics,  till 
I  struck  a  fascinating  creature,  who  made 
geometry  seem  hke  poetry  and  who  talked 
about  algebra  as  though  he  were  descriliing 
foreign  travel!  If  anybody  doubts  this  as  a 
possibility  let  him  read  one  of  (Gladstone's 
budget  speeches,  esi)ecially  that  particular  one, 
in  which  he  links  Greek  history  and  classical 
knowledge  and  the  whole  romance  of  (ireek 
literature  with  a  tax  on  raisins!  The  same 
thing  can  be  done  with  almost  any  branch  of 
knowledge,  if  there  is  the  skill,  the  zest  and 
the  industry  and  the  love  of  it  to  do  it.  It 
can  be  generated  in  almost  any  child  for  almost 
any  subject. 

Now  this  is  in  no  wise  a  technical  or  involved 
matter  at  all.  It  requires  on  the  ])art  of 
parents  and  teachers  and  the  custodians  of 
young  life  generally,  interest  and  care,  in 
watching  the  process  of  the  formation  of  the 
habits  of  speech  and  tlie  use  of  words.  It 
requires  that  the  persons  named  shall  them- 
selves keep  correct  habits,  in  the  ])resence  of 
their  children.  It  demands  that  when  an  error 
appears,  it  sliall  2)i*^iiU>lly  ^^^  sup[)lanted  by^ 


36  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

the  corresponding  correct  usage.  In  practice 
this  will  be  found  to  be  really  a  very  enjoy- 
able process.  There  is  hardly  any  pleasure 
comparable  to  the  pleasure  of  seeing  the  mind 
of  a  child  grow.  And  there  is  a  sj^ecial 
pleasure,  in  seeing  it  grow  beautifully  and 
develop  satisfactorily  in  every  respect,  and 
perhaps  the  most  outstanding  and  interesting 
manifestation  of  such  sound  growth  and  de- 
velopment is  the  evidence  that  ideas  are  coming 
into  existence  naturally  and  accurately.  One 
who  does  these  things,  will  have  the  same  sen- 
sations, only  much  more  delightful,  in  hear- 
ing his  child  speak  a  difficult  word  properly, 
that  he  has  when  it  walks  across  the  room  the 
first  time  without  assistance.  Every  tumble 
while  the  child  is  learning  to  walk,  hurries 
somebody  to  the  assistance  of  the  little  one. 
What  if  every  inaccurate  speech,  every  tumble 
of  the  mind,  every  false  accent  and  every  ab- 
surdity which  now  only  provokes  amusement 
or  laughter,  were  promptly  made  the  subject 
of  correction  and  strengthening!  Why  is  not 
one  process  as  reasonable  as  the  other?  Is  it 
absolutely  necessary  to  let  children,  in  the  in- 
terest of  "childhood,"  blunder  along  in  the  use 
of  the  mother  tongue  without  guidance  and 
with  nothing  to  strengthen  the  taste  or  train 
the  ear  in  the  right  things?     Is  that  what 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE      37 

makes  "chikllioocr'  intcrLsting.''  IT  ])c()i)le 
woiikl  only  rellect  that  tlie  neglect  of  tiKse 
things  is  the  source  of  the  fearful  depression 
of  children  in  later  school  years,  MJien  they 
flounder  around  in  tlieir  work  largely  because 
they  have  not  tlie  linguistic  resources  to  under- 
stand what  their  instructors  are  talking-  about, 
there  w^ould  soon  be  given  almost  as  much  at- 
tention to  the  training  of  tlie  mind  ;is  tlic  cor- 
rection of  a  clubfoot. 

Neglect  of  the  programme  wliicli  I  have 
here  described,  breeds  often  permanent  defects 
in  the  whole  mental  structure.  And  these 
permanent  defects,  being  alhed  to  the  iial)itual 
expression  of  ideas  and  the  organization  of 
thought,  are  among  the  most  costly  defects 
which  can  afflict  any  human  ])eing,  because 
the  real  life  of  mankind  is  in  its  mental  con- 
ceptions. Persons  liaving  a  large  ex])erience 
of  life,  are  unanimous  in  the  l)elief  tiiat  most 
persons  who  make  a  failure  of  life  do  so  be- 
cause they  are  not  al)le  to  think  clearly  or 
consecutively  al)out  ariytliing.  They  often 
exhibit  unusual  cleverness  and  unusual  ca- 
pacity in  certain  directions,  but  seem  to  be  un- 
able to  coordinate  this  exceptional  talent  or 
capacity  with  the  other  faculties  in  such  a  way 
as  to  make  it  effective  for  use.  1  know  no 
instrument  that   so   tends   to  elarilv    thought 


S8  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

as  a  keen  linguistic  sense.  By  its  very  nature 
it  creates  shadings  and  attitudes  and  percep- 
tions which  operate  for  the  sharpening  of  tlie 
mind  to  distinctions;  and  what  is  clearness  of 
thouglit  but  the  ability  to  make  accurate  dis- 
tinctions readily  and  habitually?  This  can 
readily  be  observed  in  its  formative  processes 
in  very  young  children.  In  things  physical, 
where  diflPerences  of  structure  are  obvious,  the 
differentiations  are  quickly  and  usually  clearly 
made.  But  when  it  comes  to  the  same  process, 
as  regards  words  and  language,  it  is  passed 
by  unnoticed  and  there  is  integrated  into  the 
child's  mind  a  false  distinction  M-hich  by  its 
presence  complicates  and  obscures  every  other 
distinction  to  which  it  is  related.  And  this 
process  goes  on  with  increasing,  accelerating 
force  till  what  is  false  is  mistaken  for  what  is 
true  and  the  capacity  for  acquiring  nice  shad- 
ings of  thought  is  lost  almost  before  the  think- 
ing power  has  begun  to  get  into  motion. 
Many  educated  men  have  told  me,  indeed  one 
of  the  most  erudite  college  professors  in  this 
country  told  me  recently  that  failure  to  give 
him  this  attention  had  made  it  impossible  for 
him  to  write  a  paragraph  without  a  dictionary 
at  his  side.  It  was  not,  he  said,  that  he  did  not 
know  how  to  spell  nor  tliat  he  did  not  use  cer- 
tain words  and  certain  classes  of  words  prop- 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE      39 

erly  as  a  rule,  ])ut  tluit  lie  round  liimsell'  in  a 
region  of  uncertainty  aliout  them,  wliieli 
never  left  him  quite  easy  until  ]\v  had  \ei-i- 
fied  them.  The  loss  to  liim  in  time  and  lahor, 
he  remarked,  was  something  wliieh,  reckoned 
througli  a  long  series  of  years,  was  simply 
colossal.  Have  not  many  of  us  had  exactly 
this  experience?  Now  these  permanent  de- 
fects are  bred  in  childhood.  The  tongue,  the 
eye  and  the  ear,  instead  of  all  being  j)romj)tly 
set  to  work  together  by  the  constant  correc- 
tion, through  good  usage  and  tlie  elimination 
of  errors,  get  out  of  the  habit  of  working 
too'cther  and  often  the  eve  deceives  the  ear 
and  not  infrequently  the  tongue  deceives  the 
other  two.  What  linguistic  develo])ment  does 
in  early  youth,  is  to  bring  about  tliis  coordi- 
nation and  working  together;  they  make  a 
wonderful  combination  for  thought  and  for 
the  accpiisition  of  knowledge.  Our  schools, 
grammar  and  high,  are  full  of  teachers  who 
themselves  exhibit  these  defects  before  their 
jnipils  and  perpetuate  errors  of  which  lluy 
themselves  were  the  victims  in  early  lil'e.  Not 
long  ago  a  learned  man  lecturing  to  a  class  in 
one  of  our  INIassachusetts  colleges  presented 
to  his  class  the  pitiful  and  ludicrous  s])cctacle, 
while  writing  a  sentence  on  the  blackboard,  of 
turning   around   and    asking   in    a   perplexed 


40  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

way,  whetlier  tlie  word  over  wliicli  he  was  hes- 
itating was  sjielled  with  one  "1"  or  two!  In 
other  words,  he  was  exhibiting  the  phenomena 
of  tlie  elementary  class  room  in  his  own  per- 
son, as  the  child.  Such  exhibitions  create  a 
contempt  for  erudition  which  no  amount  of 
learning  can  dissipate. 

Verbal  analysis  is  another  thing  which  may 
be  begun  in  the  linguistic  training  of  children 
at  a  very  early  period.  INIany  of  my  readers, 
probably  most  of  them,  are  familiar  ^\ith 
Kingsley's  "Water  Babies."  Very  likely 
many  who  read  that  fascinating  and  charming 
child's  book  to  their  children,  when  they  come 
to  the  chapter  which  deals  with  the  professor's 
ailment,  with  Bumpsterhausen's  blue  follicles 
and  the  doctors'  diagnosis  of  his  case,  skip 
over  those  long  words,  medical,  surgical  and 
otherwise,  which  make  that  chapter  such  a 
linguistic  delight.  But  I  found  that  the  read- 
ing of  those  chapters  carefully  and  with  strict 
and  precise  enunciation,  bred  in  my  own  chil- 
dren a  great  delight  and  amusement  in  the 
effort  to  repeat  them.  And  I  attribute  to 
that  book  and  that  particular  chapter  a  great 
deal  of  influence  in  my  o^^ti  household  in  the 
development  of  a  resource  of  vocabulary 
which  has  been  almost  priceless  in  their  educa- 
tion.    For,  be  it  remembered,  every  four-  or 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE       tl 

five-syllabled  word  generally  lias  a  history. 
That  history  is  itself  a  "story"  for  children  par 
excellence  if  properly  told  and  interestingly 
set  forth.  And,  be  it  also  remembered,  that 
polysyllabic  words  are  usually  composed  of 
simple  words  and  may  be  taken  apart,  just  ex- 
actly as  a  child  takes  off  the  arms  and  legs  of 
a  doll  and  digs  out  the  stuffing  to  see  what  it 
is  made  of.  Why  sliould  a  cliild  that  can  say 
"cat,"  "a"  and  ''log"  not  say  "catalogue"?*^ 
To  be  sure,  in  this  case,  the  syllables  have  no 
relation  to  the  word  in  their  meaning  as  simple 
ideas.  But  you  have  a  three-syllabled  word 
and  I  can  see  no  reason  in  the  world  why  a 
three-syllabled  word  with  simple  components 
should  not  be  taught  to  a  child.  And  as 
"stories"  for  children,  the  history  of  many 
long  words  is  as  fascinating  as  anytliing  ])ossi- 
bly  can  be.  And  all  the  while  you  are  train- 
ing the  ear  for  linguistic  changes,  you  are 
taking  language  apart  and  sliowing  how  it  is 
put  together.     You  are  really  teaching  verbal 

1  Since  writing  the  above  tlie  statement  of  Professor  Giiy  M. 
Whijjple,  Assistant  Professor  of  Science  and  Art  of  l",<liualion 
at  Cornell  Universitj",  has  heen  l)roujrht  to  my  notice,  that 
after  careful  study  he  found  out  that  his  three-year-old  boy 
had  a  vocal)ulary  of  1,771  words,  "catalogue"  being  one  of 
them.  This  child  also  had  such  polysyllables  at  his  command 
as  thermometer,  eunningest,  chiflonier,  "typewritering,"  cater- 
pillar. Cashmere,  BinKiiiel,  and  many  olliers.  lie  had  received 
no  formal  instruction. 


42  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

analysis,  wliich  is  itself  a  very  scientific  process 
and  one  of  the  best  for  the  development  of 
the  mind  and  the  cultivation  of  ready  and 
clear  speech.  Anybody  can  do  this  who  has 
access  to  a  dictionary.  x\nd  many  parents 
will  add  to  their  own  store  of  information  by 
doing  this  and  will  gain  pleasure  for  them- 
selves and  their  children  which  will  make  a 
bond  of  union  on  the  mental  side,  which  is 
quite  as  interesting  and  quite  as  desirable  for 
the  uses  of  life  as  the  physical  bond. 

This  is  really  notliing  more  than  what  is 
habitually  done  in  other  things.  We  often 
tear  a  flower  apart  and  show  its  structure  to 
children  that  they  may  see  how  it  grows  and 
where  its  Kfe  resides.  We  often  take  insects 
and  have  children  watch  them  to  see  how  they 
work  and  how  they  are  able  to  perform  what 
they  do.  Why  not  take  words  apart  in  the 
same  way?  Why  not  make  language  inter- 
esting in  exactly  the  same  way?  I  can  hear 
some  man  say  to  me  at  once,  "But  I  am  not  a 
philologist."  Nobody  asks  you  to  be  a  philol- 
ogist. It  is  only  needful  to  take  a  dictionary 
and  utilize  what  you  have  and  break  it  up  into 
digestible  fragments  for  the  child.  The  sim- 
ple fact  is,  that  in  the  things  of  the  mind,  we 
never  think  of  doing  these  things.  Let  a 
child's  dress  become  unbuttoned  or  a  ruffle  be- 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE      43 

come  frayed  or  a  shoe  lace  untied  and  some- 
body notices  it  and  there  is  inmiediate  instruc- 
tion or  correction  in  the  matter.  But  when 
the  mental  process  gets  unlaced  or  the  thought 
gets  frayed  into  confusion,  nearly  all  parents 
are  too  tired  or  too  indolent  to  straighten  out 
the  matter,  with  the  results  which  I  haye  al- 
ready noted.  I  have  heard  many  children  ask 
their  parents  what  certain  long  words  meant 
because  they  struck  the  ear  musically  or  cu- 
riously. But  I  have  rarely  seen  the  parent 
that  would  stop  instantly  and  tell  all  that  could 
be  told,  and  that  the  parents  in  question  them- 
selyes  could  tell,  about  that  word,  tlnis  utiliz- 
ing tlie  interest  wliich  was  there  ready  to  be 
stimulated  and  enriched  by  further  knowl- 
edge. But  I  have  often  seen  a  mother  break 
into  a  sentence  and  giye  a  child's  hair  ril^bons 
the  proper  twist  so  tliat  they  might  look  right!  ^ 
I  haye  seen  more  than  one  conversation  broken 
into,  by  parents  calling  attention  to  some 
verbal  absurdity  which  their  cliihl  was  perpe- 
trating, for  the  purpose  of  creating  amuse- 
ment for  the  adults  present!  Ex])ensive 
amusement,  I  tliink  it  is.  And  1  have  often 
thought  of  it  when  I  have  seen  young  people 
vainly  trying  to  overcome  the  bad  habits  thus 
given  a  permanent  ])lace  in  their  mental  outfit. 
Now,  as  it  happens,  the  Knglish  tongue  is 


44  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

allied  to  many  otlier  languages.  And  there  is 
hardly  a  city  in  America  where  the  opportuni- 
ties for  ohservation  in  the  comparison  of  lan- 
guages is  not  afforded  on  street  cars  and  in 
puhlic  places.  Children  if  they  are  trained  to 
it  and  directed  in  it,  make  most  admirable  use 
of  their  opportunities  in  this  respect  to  their 
vast  enjoyment.  The  resemblances  between 
English  and  German,  for  example,  are  numer- 
ous. In  any  city  where  there  is  a  considerable 
German  population,  there  creeps  into  casual 
intercourse  a  great  mass  of  words  which  in 
their  superficial  resemblance  to  English  words 
make  opportunities  for  word  "stories"  and 
open  the  way  for  the  imparting  of  a  great  deal 
of  collateral  information,  in  the  way  of  fer- 
tilization, of  which  I  shall  speak  in  a  later 
chapter.  Nor  is  this  theory  absolutely  new. 
Tlie  late  Professor  Austin  Phelps  of  Andover 
Seminary,  facile  prince ps  in  the  use  of  Eng- 
lish, in  his  lectures  on  "English  Style  in  Pub- 
lic Discourse"  advises  young  preachers  to 
cultivate  the  use  and  knowledge  of  unfamiliar 
words.  His  argimient  is  that  a  new  word  ar- 
rests attention  in  the  congregation.  All  the 
people  who  are  listening  especially,  if  the 
word  is  in  itself  an  interesting  word,  note  it 
and  probably  some  of  them  will  look  it  up. 
Twenty  years'  experience  in  the  pulpit  has 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE      45 

proved  to  me  that  as  a  fertilizer  of  thought  in 
my  congregation,  nothing  has  been  so  effective 
as  to  state  things  in  what  might  be  called  un- 
usual words.  It  arrested  attention.  It  pro- 
voked thoiiglit.  It  started  mental  operations. 
By  and  b}^  it  made  people  conscious  that  they 
were  not  only  being  religiously  exhorted  but 
mentally  enlarged.  I  had  for  many  years  a 
dozen  teachers  who  came  to  my  congregation 
long  distances  on  Sunday  mornings  from 
other  communities  because  they  found  this 
process  so  useful  to  them.  There  is  absolutely 
no  reason  why  with  the  necessary  changes 
incidental  to  childliood,  the  same  rule  cannot 
be  followed  in  any  household.  iVnd  when  it 
is  followed,  there  grows  in  the  child  mind  a 
resource  for  mental  development,  which  is  the 
most  powerful  instrument  of  knowledge.  The 
earlier  this  process  begins,  the  sooner  the 
treasure-house  of  knowledge  is  opened  to  chil- 
dren. 

And  when  once  that  treasure-house  is  opened 
by  means  of  a  large,  clearly  apprehended 
and  widely  differentiated  vocabulary,  tlure 
is  no  limit  to  the  possibilities.  I  once  had 
a  young  Irish  lad  in  my  congregation  whose 
natural  wit  and  verbal  fluency  attracted  me, 
especially  as  it  was  exercised  so  exclusively 
along   lines   which   were   worse   than   useless. 


46  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

I  got  liim  interested  in  me  and  got  him  to 
reading  certain  books  and  talking  with  me 
about  them.  His  verbal  sense  was  quickly 
aroused  and  after  half-a-dozen  years  he  got 
so  in  the  habit  of  using  my  own  vocabulary 
that  a  missionary  classmate  of  mine  who  came 
to  Boston  from  a  foreign  land,  after  years  of 
absence,  and  did  not  know  exactly  where  the 
church  of  which  I  was  then  pastor  was  located, 
dropped  into  our  young  people's  meeting  be- 
fore the  evening  service  intending  at  its  close 
to  make  inquiries,  but  said  afterward  that  he 
did  not  need  to  make  the  inquiry  because  pres- 
ently in  the  remarks  of  a  young  boy  he  recog- 
nized some  peculiarities  of  my  own  vocabulary. 
It  was  the  young  Irishman.  To-day  that 
3'outh  is  performing  the  same  service  for  a 
Sunday  school  of  over  five  hundred  pupils. 
He  is  a  marked  man  in  the  form  and  utterance 
of  his  public  speech.  I  have  seen  this  process 
rei)eated  over  and  over  again. 

All  thinking  is  in  terms  of  language  and 
until  there  is  a  sound  linguistic  basis  you  can 
have  no  real  thinking.  It  is,  therefore,  the 
paramount  problem  of  education  to  create  first 
and  foremost  in  the  minds  of  young  children 
as  rich  and  full  and  varied  a  knowledge  of 
words  as  possible.  It  is  not  necessary  that 
they  shall  fully  "understand"  all  that  these 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE      47 

words  mean  or  all  that  can  be  made  of  them. 
It  is  enough  that  what  they  do  know  is  accu- 
rate and  is  not  allied  to  something  that  is  false 
and  that  requires  to  be  unlearned.  The  sup- 
position that  this  initial  contact  with  the 
mother  tongue  must  be  always  in  the  simplest 
and  most  elementary  forms  is,  in  my  judg- 
ment and  according  to  my  experience,  wrong. 
Composite  sounds  and  the  most  varied  syl- 
labic construction  can  be  taught  with  very 
little  effort,  and  if  allied  to  the  most  simple 
musical  knowledge  and  made  rhythmic,  there 
is  almost  no  limit  to  what  can  be  done.  I  have 
taught  a  child  to  repeat  an  entire  Hebrew 
psalm,  with  absolutely  not  a  single  error  in 
pronunciation,  without  the  child  "understand- 
ing" anything  about  it  other  than  it  >vas  the 
Hebrew  w^ay  of  saying  what  the  child  knew 
in  English  and  had  learned  as  a  part  of  its 
Bible  study.  I  have  taught  a  child  to  repeat 
fifty  lines  of  Virgil  in  exactly  the  same  way. 
Of  course  somebody  will  say,  "What  was  the 
use?"  The  use  was,  apart  from  the  fact  that 
it  created  traditions  and  mind  stuff,  that  it 
taught  careful  vocalization  and  trained  the  ear 
to  note  the  varied  succession  of  sounds  and  es- 
tablished the  ability  to  grapple  with  any  word, 
however  long  or  however  unfamiliar.  ^lod- 
ern  languages,  German  and  I'rcnch,  should  be 


48  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

tau«4lit  ill  Ibis  way  first  of  all.  What  is  this 
but  the  process  reduced  to  a  programme  which 
"vve  employ  casually  and  in  a  slovenly  manner 
when  we  simply  let  children  learn  their  mother 
tongue  by  hearing  it  talked?  This  is  simply 
organizing  the  materials  out  of  w^hich  the 
linguistic  consciousness  shall  be  made.  It  is 
the  erection  of  barriers  against  misuse  and  de- 
fective usage.  It  is  the  building  of  the  solid 
substructure  of  knowdedge  by  the  formation 
of  standards  which  once  made  have  a  deter- 
minative influence  in  the  whole  subsequent 
contact  Avith  the  things  for  which  language  is 
employed.  It  means  that  certain  things  are 
automatically  excluded  and  made  impossible  in 
the  educational  development  of  the  child  mind. 
It  means  that  all  along  the  pathway  of  its 
growth  it  will  find  materials  planted  in  the 
early  years,  which  will  be  lights  for  the  illumi- 
nation of  dark  places  and  guides  for  the  path- 
way out  of  obscurity  and  mental  confusion. 
JNIany  things  not  "understood"  by  a  child  are 
nevertheless,  I  have  found  out,  stored  aw^ay  in 
the  mind  and  at  the  appropriate  moment  re- 
appear, to  give  the  pleasure  and  delight  of  the 
renewal  of  an  old  acquaintance.  The  child  ! 
that  has  built  up  for  it  a  sound  and  consider- 
able and  varied  vocabulary  before  it  is  six 
years  of  age,  will  have,  other  things  being 


THE  INSTRUMENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE      49 

equal,  three  years  the  start  of  any  child  not 
so  trained.  It  will  have  access  to  more  books, 
more  forms  of  knowledge,  will  have  intellect- 
ual interests  and  intellectual  enjoyments  which 
the  average  child  of  nine  not  only  does  not 
know  but  in  many  cases  probably  never  will 

know.       I   count  this   lingnkfin  trpining   ng   thp 

most  important  factor  in  the  whole  scheme  of 
intensive  development  for  children.  I  cannot 
see  that  the  child  loses  one  thing  that  it  would 
otherwise  have.  I  cannot  see  that  any  child 
pleasure,  any  child  enjoyment,  any  rational 
and  sound  and  delightful  characteristic  of  true 
and  happy  childhood  need  in  the  slightest  ])e 
interfered  with.  But  on  the  contrary  1  have 
seen  childhood  develop  and  its  companionship 
and  fellowship  with  parents,  with  nature,  mm  lb 
the  world,  with  the  phenomena  of  life,  vastly 
increased,  and  happy  childhood  made  ha])pier 
because  there  were  left  no  cruel  mall'ornia- 
tions  to  cause  the  heart-breaking*  distresses  of 
later  school  years.  I  have  seen  such  intensive 
development  with  no  loss  of  health  and  with 
decided  gain  to  every  other  interest.  The  tool 
of  that  development  was  a  large  and  compre- 
hensive acquaintance  with  and  use  of  the 
mother  tongue. 


The  Infant  as  soon  as  born  was  not  consigned  to 
the  dwelHng  of  a  hireling  nurse,  but  was  reared  and 
cherished  in  the  bosom  of  its  mother,  whose  highest 
praise  it  was  to  take  care  of  her  household  affairs  and 
attend  to  her  children.  ...  In  her  presence  not 
one  indecent  word  was  uttered ;  nothing  was  done 
against  propriety  and  good  manners.  The  hours  of 
study  and  serious  employment  were  settled  by  her 
direction,  and  not  only  so  but  even  the  diversions  of 
the  children  were  conducted  with  modest  reserve  and 
sanctity  of  manners.  .  .  .  The  consequence  of 
this  regular  discipline  was,  that  the  j'oung  mind, 
whole  and  sound,  and  unwarped  by  irregular  pas- 
sions, received  the  elements  of  the  liberal  arts  with 
hearty  avidity. 

— Tacitus  on  the  Training  of  Roman  Children. 


Ill 

MIND  FERTILIZATION 

One  of  the  strangest  things  about  civihza- 
tion  in  all  ages,  and  not  less  of  our  own  than 
of  those  preceding  it,  is  the  fact  that  in  almost 
all  things  with  which  men  have  had  to  do  ex- 
cept the  preparation  of  children  for  hfe,  tlicy 
have  recognized  the  necessity  for  adecjuate 
preparation  and  proper  fertilization.  Some 
years  ago,  having  recently  moved  into  the 
countr}'',  I  noted  how  a  certain  neighbor  of 
mine,  who  had  been  very  successful  in  raising 
apples,  prej^ared  the  soil  for  some  young  trees 
he  was  setting  out.  He  did  not  simply  dig  a 
hole  and  stick  in  the  trees.  He  carefully 
studied  the  nature  of  tlie  soil,  tlie  re(iuiremcnts 
of  the  particular  trees  he  was  planting,  pro- 
vided for  their  growth  in  their  earlier  years, 
and  in  every  manner  possible  saw  to  it  that  his 
trees  should  come  to  the  bearing  period  strong, 
healthful  and  thoroughly  fitted  to  make  the 
greatest  possible  yield.  He  and  his  farm  are 
in  distinct  contrast  to  all  those  about  him. 
They  rarely  yield  any  profit,  his  always  yields 
a  profit.     Their  children,  as  soon  as  they  arc 

51 


52  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

able  to  work,  leave  school  and  join  their  care- 
less, untrained  parents  in  making  a  bare  living 
from  the  land.  His  children  have,  as  they 
have  come  along,  gone  to  fitting  school  and 
college.  He  ships  apples  to  Europe,  lives 
well,  is  a  reading  man  and  has  a  lovel}^  home 
and  otherwise  makes  his  New  Hampshire 
place  furnish  not  only  living  but  a  life.  Re- 
duced to  lowest  terms,  it  comes  of  the  fact  that 
he  fertilizes  the  soil  for  the  trees  which  furnish 
the  income  out  of  which  all  his  other  enjoy- 
ments and  advantages  arise. 

It  is  one  of  the  anomalies  of  our  own  time 
that  this  perfectly  simple  and  natural  process 
is  so  little  applied  to  children.  Take  almost 
any  community  in  this  land  and  the  curious 
thing  about  it  is  that,  not  excepting  college  or 
educated  communities  and  observinfj  what 
parents  permit  their  children  to  imbibe  as  the 
subsoil  out  of  which  their  later  lives  are  to 
emerge,  you  will  be  astounded  to  notice  that 
all  the  mental  weeds  have  the  first  and  best 
chance.  You  will  be  surprised  to  find  that 
there  is  an  ahnost  complete  absence  of  plan  in 
the  matter  of  stocking  the  cliild  mind  with 
useful,  fertile  notions  and  a  neglect  of  the 
mental  soil  which,  in  any  other  operation, 
would  be  pronounced  scandalous  in  the  ex- 
treme.    No  factory  would  for  an  instant  con- 


MIND  FERTILIZATION  53 

sent  to  have  its  raw  material  treated  with  both 
the  positive  injury  and  the  disgraceful  neg- 
lect to  which  children's  minds  are  subjected  in 
the  most  attractive  and  acquisitive  period.  Xo 
mechanic  would  think  of  treating  his  tools  as 
people  suffer  their  children's  main  asset  for  a 
happy  and  useful  life  to  be  handled.  Xo 
skilled  workman  would  dream  of  allowing  an 
immature  and  ignorant  person  to  handle  liis 
delicate  instruments  in  the  manner  in  which 
parents  allow  foolish  and  imlearned  and  even 
vicious  persons  to  experiment  with  the  mental 
life  and  habits  of  their  own  offspring.  The 
result  of  all  this  is  plain  in  the  thousands  of 
absolutely  incapable  people  all  around  us, 
who  have  no  initiative  of  their  own  and  have 
to  a  great  degree  lost  even  the  power  of  intel- 
ligently grasping  initiative  which  is  ])rovidc(l 
for  them  by  others. 

Trees,  plants,  must  have  a  ])repared  soil 
for  their  proper  growth  and  development, 
why  not  children?  Here  again,  the  i)hysical 
base  of  life  is  beginning  to  get  fair  recogni- 
tion, but  still  in  a  blundering  way.  One  of 
the  ludicrous  Instances  of  this  latter  statement 
may  be  found  in  the  playground  movement, 
now  nation-wide  and  steadily  develo])ing.  I 
visited  lately  a  recently  opened  and  beauti- 
fully   equipped    playground.     Its    site    was 


04  THE  SCHOOr.  IX  THE  HOME 

lovely  and  thoroiiglily  attractive.  The 
grounds  were  ])ountifiilly  bestowed  with  appa- 
ratus which  admitted  of  many  varieties  of  ex- 
ercise and  enjoyment.  It  had  many  things 
M'hich  the  children  of  the  most  opulent  might 
well  wish  to  make  their  own.  But  as  I 
watclied  the  cliildren  about  that  ground  the 
one  thing  that  impressed  me  most,  was  the 
utter  poverty  of  the  children  in  the  ability  to 
use  what  they  had  thus  abundantly  placed 
before  them.  Half-a-dozen  forms  of  play 
would  probably  cover  all  that  they  did.  And 
the  one  most  needful  tiling  of  all  was  wanting, 
— a  skilled  and  thoroughly  trained  person  to 
teach  these  children  how  to  play.  Contrasted 
with  the  skilled  German  play-instructors  I 
have  seen,  M'ith  only  a  fragment  of  the  appa- 
ratus to  deal  with,  it  seemed  like  a  pathetic 
waste  of  material,  and  I  could  think  of  noth- 
ing other  than  a  noveau  riche  country  vainly 
trying  to  imitate  the  older  country  that  had 
less  to  do  with  but  used  it  with  vastly  more  in- 
telligence and  effectiveness.  But  at  least  the 
playground  recognized  the  need  for  a  substan- 
tial physical  base,  and  health  was  written  in 
large  letters  on  all  that  the  eye  could  see,  and 
the  intention  was  everywhere  evident. 

But  who  thinks  of  preparing  the  mind  in 
the  same  ample  fashion  ?     How  many  persons 


MIND  FERTILIZATION  55 

systematically  think  of  giving  to  the  growing 
mind  the  raw  materials  of  knowledge,  the 
elementary  forms  of  science,  and  generally  of 
habituating  the  minds  of  children  to  grasp 
important  and  useful  facts  and  otherwise  pre- 
pare for  some  adequate  familiarity  in  mature 
<ife  with  the  world  in  which  they  are  to  live 
and  move  and  have  their  being?  How  many, 
even  of  educated  parents,  have  a  cleai'ly 
thought-out  plan  for  filling  the  minds  of  their 
children  with  the  things  without  which  success- 
ful access  to  mental  fullness  and  enjoyment  is 
well-nigh  impossible?  In  other  words  who 
thinks  of  doing  for  the  child  mind  what  my 
friend,  the  farmer,  does  for  every  tree  he 
plants? 

One  reason  why  so  few  people  think  along 
these  lines,  is  the  prevalence  of  the  supersti- 
tion that  the  child  mind  cannot  grasp  impor- 
tant and  fundamental  things  as  readily  as 
foolish  and  absurd  things.  Hence  the  "sim- 
plification" of  all  sorts  of  things  for  the  child 
mind  and  the  reduction  to  something  worstf 
than  folly  of  the  operations  of  the  young 
intellect  on  the  theory  that  whatever  ideas 
are  given  to  it,  have  to  be  made  semi- 
idiotic  before  the  young  intellect  can  handle 
them.  All  the  while,  wherever  the  young 
mind  is  left  to  itself,  it  gravitates  automatic- 


56  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

ally  to  something  worth  wliile  and  funda- 
mental, wherever  choice  is  possible.  Little 
girls  take  to  dolls  ahnost  from  the  beginning. 
They  play  naturally  with  the  profoundest 
problem  of  humanity,  namely,  the  rearing  and 
training  of  childhood.  They  introduce  natu- 
rally and  wath  exactitude  principles,  which,- 
when  science  develops  them  and  organizes 
them  and  proves  them,  are  called  by  various 
profound  scientific  names.  By  and  by  the 
absurd  processes  called  education  interfere 
with  these  natural  processes  of  the  cliild  deal- 
ing with  fundamental  things  and  then  ensues 
that  fearful  period  of  adolescence,  full  of  hor- 
rors and  distresses  which  are  no  more  neces- 
sary than  smallpox  or  typhoid  fever.  Al- 
most all  the  so-called  horrors  of  the  adolescent 
period  show  conclusively  that  the  natural  proc- 
esses of  childhood  have  become  perverted  by 
what  we  call  "education,"  and  the  whole  mis- 
erable muddle  in  which  civilization  finds  itself 
on  the  sex  question,  is  almost  directly  due  to 
this  artificial  and  obfuscating  interference 
together  with  inability  and  ignorance  in  prop- 
erly fertilizing  the  child  mind  on  the  signifi- 
cance of  knowledge,  which  it  is  not  only 
perfectly  capable  of  receiving  but  which  hav- 
ing, it  will  automatically  apph\ 

Why  food  for  the  body  and  not  for  the 


MIND  FERTILIZATION  57 

mind?  ^Vliy  strictly  regulated  and  properly 
prepared  food  for  the  stomach  and  not  for 
the  mind?  Why  shall  the  baby  be  filled  with 
carefully  selected  nutriment  for  its  little  body 
and  then  stuffed  with  all  sorts  of  rubbish  for 
its  little  mind?  This  is  one  of  the  funda- 
mental questions  in  the  rearing  of  children  and 
perhaps  one  of  the  most  neglected  of  all.  The 
simple  fact  is  that  the  superstitions  about 
things  which  are  vital  and  important  still  be- 
fog the  minds  of  people  and  prevent  them 
from  doing  as  well  by  their  children  as  they 
would  do  by  the  plant  in  the  window  or  the 
tree  in  the  field.  That  the  mind  must  have  its 
food  prepared  will  strike  many  persons  as  a 
positively  new  idea.  That  that  food  should 
itself  be  subject  to  constant,  careful  scrutiny 
and  re\dsion  is  absolutely  beyond  tlie  view. 
But  there  is  the  mind,  with  all  its  powers 
awake,  observing,  taking  in  and  making  its 
own,  everything  that  it  possibly  can  come  into 
contact  with  and  either  classifying  and  dis- 
tributing in  an  orderly  way  its  fresh  acquisi- 
tions or  muddling  them  uj),  to  tlieir  uscloss- 
ness  as  fertilization,  and  also  destroying  the 
very  powers  by  which  they  are  acquired. 

Now  the  object  of  this  chapter  is  to  con- 
vine*?  and  persuade  that  if  you  want  a  full 
mind  and  a  well-nurtured  one,  vou  must  fer- 


58  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

tilize  it,  so  that  wlien  ideas  present  themselves, 
they  will  find  a  soil  fitted  to  receive  them. 
This  means  that  you  regulate  not  only  what 
ideas  are  received,  but  when  and  in  what  form. 
That  there  shall  be  an  intelligent  and  deliber- 
ate choice  of  ideas  for  the  child  mind  and  most 
of  all  that  what  goes  into  the  mind  shall  have 
some  relation  to  the  higher  views  of  life,  and 
that  mental  weeds  shall  not  possess  the  soil  to 
such  an  extent  that  half  of  life  has  to  be  con- 
sumed in  rooting  out  what  has  been  by  neglect 
and  blunder  permitted  to  occupy  the  soil. 

Among  the  very  first  things  to  consider  in 
this  relation  is  that  what  are  called  the  higher 
things  of  life,  the  more  profound,  if  you 
please,  are  as  easily  acquired  in  childhood  as 
any  others.  I  have  already  referred  to  the 
obfuscation  of  children's  minds  on  the  subject 
of  sex.  But  the  same  thing  is  true  about 
many  other  things.  A  child  can  be  taught 
the  fundamental  principles  of  geometry,  for 
examjjle,  at  three  as  readily  as  it  can  be  taught 
to  build  a  block  house.  It  can  be  taught  to 
observe  relations  which  are  fundamental  in 
mathematical  calculation  as  easily  at  four  as  it 
can  any  of  the  nonsense  wliich  is  usually  sup- 
posed to  be  fit  for  children  at  that  age.  Even 
the  fundamental  principles  of  philology  can 
be  thus  taught  and  I  have  seen  children  at 


MIND  FERTILIZATION  59 

three,  four  and  five  analyze  words  and  recog- 
nize stems  and  make  proper  and  cogent  infer- 
ences by  reason  of  resemblances  in  form  and 
use,  which,  if  they  appeared  in  a  text-book  or 
a  doctor's  thesis,  would  be  called  scientific 
knowledge.  Of  course,  somebody  had  to 
teach  it.  Of  course,  somebody  had  to  call  the 
child's  attention  to  these  things.  But  there 
was  no  greater  difficulty  on  the  part  of  the 
child,  that  I  could  discover,  in  taking  in  that 
kind  of  knowledge  than  any  other.  In  fact, 
the  process  became  so  interesting  that  the  child 
soon  attempted  it  on  its  own  account  with 
amusing  and  interesting  results.  I  recall 
very  well  dealing  with  a  very  young  child  once 
on  the  subject  of  "species."  This  is  a  scien- 
tific word  and  involved  considerable  explana- 
tion, but  it  was  worth  all  it  cost  both  in  time 
and  effort  when  after  a  rain  the  little  girl  see- 
ing a  robin  pick  up  a  worm  propounded  the 
question,  "Papa,  fishes  eat  worms  and  birds 
eat  worms.  Do  they  belong  to  the  same  spe- 
cies?" To  rouse  that  mental  operation  was 
itself  to  start  the  sources  of  knowledge  from 
their  hiding  places.  The  worms  in  question 
brought  forth  another  interesting  specimen  of 
the  automatic  application  of  the  child  mind  to 
questions  of  knowledge.  The  small  boy  aged 
four  beiuiT  told   about   worms   bcinir   "articu- 


60  THE  SCHOOL  IX  THE  HOME 

latcs"  and  the  i^ossibility  of  the  growth  of 
tliL'ir  various  segments,  was  found  on  the 
same  occasion  that  the  "species"  episode  oc- 
curred, cutting  up  w^orms  into  parts,  with  a 
view  to  multiplying  the  species,  having  also 
been  told  that  they  kept  the  soil  loose  so  that 
the  plants  could  spread  their  roots  more 
readily  in  the  loosened  soil.  There  you  had 
one  of  the  great  scientific  generalizations,  one 
of  the  great  geological  facts  of  the  distribu- 
tion of  the  earth's  surface,  properly  and 
firmly  habited  in  the  child's  mind  in  a  fashion 
which  need  never  be  disturbed. 

In  a  similar  way  the  silver  at  the  table,  the 
glass,  the  china,  the  food  and  its  sources,  all 
become  the  media  for  the  conveying  of  exact 
and  interesting  knowledge.  Now  the  im- 
portant thing  about  all  these  things  was  not 
merely  that  real  and  useful  information  was 
placed  in  the  mind,  but  that  the  mind  itself 
M'as  being  fertilized  for  the  subsequent  recep- 
tion of  other  information  and  provided  with 
the  machinery  for  its  proper  classification  and 
retention.  In  this  way,  geography  and  arith- 
metic and  grammar  and  various  sciences  were 
taught,  not  as  such,  but  as  fertilizing  material 
which  by  their  occupancy  of  the  mind,  ex- 
cluded the  vile  stuff  which  is  usually  doled 
out  to  the  infant  intellect,  and  what  is  more. 


MIND  FERTILIZATION  '6X 

and  perhaj)s  best  of  all,  was  that  these  particu- 
lar children  were  made  immune  from  the  mis- 
use of  their  minds  later  on  in  life.  There 
was  nothing  supernatural  about  it.  It  was 
simply  doing  what  my  friend,  the  farmer,  did 
for  his  trees.  The  mental  soil  was  fertihzed 
by  things  inherently  useful,  interesting  and 
suggestive,  and  a  rudimentary  organization 
was  set  up  to  properly  husband  what  came 
into  the  mind  for  future  use. 

The  fertilization  here  described  was  of 
course  of  the  nature  of  the  surroundings  of 
the  children  in  question.  A  legal  friend  of 
mine  who  was  accustomed  to  take  home  with 
him  cases  to  prepare  for  trial  was  greatly  as- 
tounded after  some  months  to  hear  his  young 
son  who  often  sat  in  the  next  room  while  he 
was  dictating  to  his  stenograj^her,  not  merely 
use  but  accurately  apply  many  legal  terms  in 
his  play.  He  heard  his  small  boy  repeat  the 
most  comphcated  legal  sentences,  tliose  rem- 
nants of  barbarism,  the  rage  and  despair  of  all 
lovers  of  truth  and  justice  and  the  proper  use 
of  language.  He  heard  this  child  utter  with 
ease  and  skill  whole  paragraphs  of  pleadings 
and  was  both  shocked  and  humiliated  to  find 
that  his  child,  left  to  himself,  grappled  with 
the  severities  of  the  language  under  their  most 
grotesque    and    damnable    forms     (no    other 


62  THE  SCHOOL  IN   THE  HOME 

word  fits  tlie  legal  nomenclature)  while  he 
ha])itiially  talked  twaddle  and  foolishness  with 
his  child.  A  i)hysician  classmate  of  mine  has 
rehited  something  of  the  same  sort  about  one 
of  his  children  who  learned  to  connect  certain 
aihnents  with  certain  symptoms  and  diseases 
and  made  him  often,  when  he  wrote  a  pre- 
scription, remembering  the  comments  of  his 
cliild  upon  the  same  diseases,  feel  absolutely 
silly.  But  why  need  he  have  been  surprised? 
The  child  mind  will  take  what  is  offered. 
Offer  it  folderol  and  idiotic  stuff  in  the  shape 
of  brutalized  English  and  misinformation  of 
all  kinds  and  that  will  be  its  mental  subsoil. 
Offer  it  knowledge,  clear,  accurate  and  classi- 
fied, and  you  will  get  an  orderly  mind  and  one 
that  governs  and  regulates  its  own  processes 
presently.  Nor  will  this  little  mind  be  a 
genius !  It  will  simply  be  as  well  fed  in  mind 
as  it  is  in  body.  It  M-ill  simply  have  as  much 
attention  given  to  what  it  thinks  as  to  what  it 
eats.  In  other  words,  parents  will  be  think- 
ing almost  as  much  of  the  brains  of  their  chil- 
dren as  they  now  think  of  their  bowels.  Is  it 
so  revolutionary  a  principle  as  some  people 
seem  to  imagine  that  you  get  out  of  a  child's 
mind  what  you  put  into  it,  no  more,  no  less? 
Does  it  involve  some  hocus-pocus  or  other 
magic  to  believe  that  if  you  give  a  child's  mind 


MIND  FERTILIZATION  63 

worthy  things  to  think  about,  that  it  will,  by 
and  by,  handle  all  things  wortliily  ? 

The  objection  most  commonly  urged  against 
this  process  of  enriching  the  minds  of  children 
by  real  knowledge  and  worth-while  material, 
is  that  it  interferes  with  the  child's  healthful 
growth  and  development  which  seems  one  of 
the  most  foolish  ideas  that  ever  obsessed  the 
human  brain.  On  this  theory  we  should  go 
back  to  the  oldest  of  superstitions  and  fill  the 
minds  of  children  with  all  kinds  of  outlandish 
stuff  and  prevent  any  modern  ideas  from  ob- 
taining an  entrance  and,  in  sooth,  that  seems 
to  be  what  many  people  do.  Unfortunately, 
too,  the  domain  in  which  the\^  oj^erate  most  ap- 
pears to  be  that  of  religion,  where  ideas  of  God 
and  the  world  and  sin  and  evil  and  the  rest  are 
inculcated — ideas  which  can  hardly  emerge  in 
anything  but  gross  errors  of  all  kinds  wliich 
finally  express  themselves  in  the  grotesque 
ideas  of  morals  and  behavior  which  are  so  com- 
mon. Possibly  if  it  were  carefully  worked 
out,  it  could  readily  be  shown  that  the  absurd 
divorce  of  religion  and  morality,  for  example, 
one  of  the  commonest  phenomena  of  our  day, 
has  its  rise  in  this  practice.  Then  again,  the 
play  upon  the  fears  and  ignorance  of  children, 
the  use  of  that  ignorance  and  those  fears  for 
the  convenience  of  the  parent  or  teacher  and  as 


61.  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

a  means  of  avoiding  tlie  labor  of  giving  the 
correct  or  needed  instruction,  also  has  its  large 
influence.  In  any  case,  if  to  inculcate  modern 
ideas  is  destructive  of  health,  the  deliverance  of 
tlie  world  from  the  miserable  bondage  in  which 
it  now  welters,  will  be  long  deferred. 

But  the  answer  to  this  objection  is  simply 
that  it  is  not  true.  Not  a  single  reason  can  be 
adduced  to  show  that  giving  a  child  informa- 
tion about  geometry  is  one  whit  more  calcu- 
lated to  break  down  health  than  to  give  it 
INIother  Goose  rhymes.  Nor  can  it  be  shown 
tliat  to  give  it  accurate  knowledge  about  botany 
is  one  degree  worse  for  its  physical  well-being 
than  to  chatter  simply  about  the  "pretty  flow- 
ers." Some  kind  of  information  the  child  is 
bound  to  gather.  Some  kind  of  ideas  is  sure 
to  germinate  and  occupj'^  the  soil.  If  non- 
sense, then  you  have  a  nonsense  foundation 
which  will  assuredly  have  to  be  forked  over  and 
dug  out  as  a  garden  has  to  be  forked  to  get 
out  the  weeds  if  j'ou  are  to  have  productiveness 
afterward. 

Side  by  side  with  this  habit  of  approach  is 
the  equally  silly  notion  that  you  are  denucHng 
cliildliood  of  its  beauty  and  innocence.  Do 
Meeds  make  a  garden  beautiful?  Is  the  proc- 
ess of  pulling  up  tile  ugly  things  which  de- 
form and  befuddle  the  mind  one  of  beauty  and 


MIND  FERTILIZATION  65 

loveliness  or  is  it  one  of  pain  and  wretchedness? 
Clearly  the  latter.  The  soil  of  the  child  mind 
keeps  rare  and  beautiful  when  it  is  filled  with 
rare  and  beautiful  things  and  such  things  are 
choice  in  their  demands  for  soil  and  culture. 
The  persistent  care  in  the  selection  of  materials 
and  the  wise  and  intelligent  arrangement  of 
this  material  to  suit  times  and  seasons  will 
make  a  certain  parallelism  between  the  growth 
of  the  mind  of  the  child  and  the  2:)eriods  of  the 
year  and  the  periods  of  its  own  development, 
which  is  itself  one  of  the  beautiful  facts  of  hu- 
man growth.  When  the  fertilizing  process 
has  been  carried  on  for  a  few  years,  one  sees 
just  what  one  sees  in  a  carefully  planted 
orchard  or  a  carefully  arranged  garden,  each 
thing  in  its  jilace,  each  healthfully  developing, 
each  bearing  in  its  season  after  its  own  kind 
and  each  sui^plementing  the  other  in  beautiful 
cooperation  and  correlation.  I  am  at  this  mo- 
ment thinking  of  the  great  natural  processes 
which  were  taught  to  little  children,  not  far 
from  the  place  where  this  is  written,  by  watch- 
ing the  operations  of  ants,  bees,  wasps  and 
birds.  Of  the  biological  principles  which  were 
here  shown  and  steadily  developed  so  that  when 
the  same  children  who  "played"  at  knowledge 
with  these,  found  themselves  face  to  face  with 
the  "science"  of  the  same  things  in  college, 


66  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

tliey  met  old  friends  with  delight  and  made 
knowledge  seven  times  more  of  a  friend  than  it 
was,  if  possible,  before.  If  anything  was  done 
in  the  matter  of  the  beauty  and  innocence  of 
cliildhood,  it  was  extended  and  given  a  longer 
lease  of  life  and  a  continuity  into  the  severer 
questions  of  maturity,  which  made  the  natural 
difficulty  of  these  problems  somewhat  less  be- 
cause they  seemed  inwoven  with  the  develop- 
ment of  life  itself,  as  indeed  they  are.  The  in- 
comparable folly  of  postponing  the  period  of 
knowledge  till  it  has  to  be  approached  with 
pen^erted  tastes  and  muddled  ideas  is  equaled 
only  by  the  insanity  that  this  process  conserves 
the  beauty  of  childhood. 

I  have  just  referred  to  a  certain  parallehsm 
between  the  growth  of  knowledge  and  times 
and  seasons.  The  idea  seems  a  trifle  romantic 
of  course.  But  just  reflect  for  a  moment  how 
difl*erent  the  j^henomena  of  winter  are  from 
those  of  spring  and  what  a  wide  variation  there 
is  of  principles  to  be  taught  in  the  two  seasons. 
Could  a  finer  arrangement  for  contrasts  and 
comparison  of  ideas  and  knowledge  for  little 
children  i^ossibly  be  devised?  It  ahiiost  seems 
as  though  the  things  were  arranged  for  the 
purpose  of  training  the  juvenile  mind  to  ob- 
servation and  comparison  and  for  the  noting 
of    very    diverse    and    interesting    processes. 


MIND  FERTILIZATION  67 

Yet,  except  in  the  most  superficial  way  and 
that  chiefly  calculated  to  breed  dilettantism, 
little  or  no  use  is  made  by  most  people  of  these 
seasons  to  teach  the  young  mind  the  great  laws 
of  nature  and  the  similar  laws  of  the  human 
mind.  But  they  are  there  to  be  taught  and 
taught  accurately  and  by  a  method  thoroughly 
in  accord  with  known  science.  In  fact,  it  was 
by  these  very  processes  that  primitive  man  be- 
gan his  march  toward  knowledge  and  light. 
Are  we  not  to  continue  that  march  or  are  our 
children  perpetually  to  go  through  the  savage 
process  of  being  torn  up  by  the  roots,  harrowed 
over  by  ignorant  and  brutalized  schoolmasters 
themselves  harrowed  over  by  equally  obtuse 
college  professors,  until  they  come  forth 
dubbed  bachelors  of  arts,  unable  to  think 
clearly,  discuss  any  subject  with  fullness  or  in- 
telligence and  incapable  of  meeting  tlie  sim- 
plest ethical  problems  with  firmness  or  justice? 
If  this  seems  a  severe  indictment,  let  people 
simply  look  about  them  and  they  will  see  on 
every  hand  the  pitiful  results  of  a  process 
which  ultimately  resolves  itself  into  this:  that 
there  were  planted  in  the  virgin  soil  of  child- 
hood, weeds  instead  of  sound,  useful,  produc- 
tive things  and  not  only  so,  but  the  entire  soil 
itself  was  left  to  become  sterile  and  unproduc- 
tive of  anytliing  worth  while. 


68  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

Clearly  this  is  a  parental  question.  It  can- 
not be  left  until  the  period  called  "school  age" 
as  though  this  age  came  automatically  accord- 
ing to  some  heavenly  arranged  arithmetical 
succession.  By  the  time  what  is  called  school 
age  arrives,  the  damage  has  usually  been  done. 
The  habits,  while  not  utterly  deranged,  have 
been  deformed  by  ill  usage  and  the  very  mind 
stuff  itself  corrupted  by  the  infusion  of  all 
kinds  of  superstition,  puerility  and  falsehood, 
so  that  only  the  most  persistent  effort  on  the 
part  of  everybody  concerned — parent,  teacher 
and  the  whole  organization  of  church  and 
state  and  home — can  scarcely  bring  order  out 
of  the  chaos  which  the  early  sterilization  of  the 
mind  has  j)roduced.  It  is  a  never-ending  mira- 
cle to  me  that  the  mass  of  children  turn  out  as 
well  as  they  do,  though  perhaps  this  is  because 
they  lack  the  training  and  mental  organization 
and  power  of  initiative  to  do  very  much  that 
is  effectively  bad.  Dr.  Conan  Doyle  remarks 
that  it  is  a  common  sight  to  see  the  best  head  in 
a  court  room  on  the  shoulders  of  the  criminal 
in  the  dock,  which  is  simply  saying  that  that 
head  very  likely  has  been  least  under  the  leash 
of  the  processes  we  have  been  describing  and 
has  had  a  natural  though  lawless  development 
and  at  least  has  not  lost  its  power  of  self-pro- 
pulsion and  has  not  slavishly  laid  itself  under 


MIND  FERTILIZATION  69 

the  taskmaster's  lash  of  consistent  dullness  and 
stupidity.  In  this  same  connection  perhaps 
the  natural  alliance  between  genius  and  irregu- 
larities of  one  kind  and  another,  which  some 
psychologists  allege,  is  due  to  just  the  fact 
which  I  have  been  discussing,  that  the  genius 
has  kept  his  power  of  observation  and  initia- 
tive unimpaired  and  perhaps  in  early  youth  es- 
caped the  brutalizing  and  leveling  process 
which  we  call  education,  and  so  brought  forth 
something  which  was  at  least  his  own  and  not 
the  stupid,  crass  product  passed  on  from  gen- 
eration to  generation  as  knowledge.  But,  we 
may  ask,  must  genius  always  be  yoked  with  ir- 
regularity? Can  we  not  have  originality,  ini- 
tiative, freedom  and  unimpaired  power  and  yet 
have  orderly  persons,  conscious  of  social  obliga- 
tion and  amenable  to  the  natural  intercourse  of 
human  beings,  living  with  and  for  each  other? 
Why  miist  "bright"  people  alwaj'-s  be  held  to 
be  somewhat  "eccentric"  or  otherwise  "pecul- 
iar" or  something  else  which  makes  them  un- 
livable?  There  is  no  more  need  for  this  tiling 
than  there  is  that  "bright"  people  should  all 
have  red  hair  or  blue  eyes.  The  more  simple 
explanation  is  that  most  people  are  jammed 
into  somebody's  mold  of  misinformation  or  no 
information,  fed  on  falsehoods,  niu'tured  on 
inanities  or  stupidities  or  worse,  and  then  ex- 


70  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

pected  to  develop  into  useful  men  and  women. 
The  expectation  that  somehow  or  other  we  shall  ( 
be  able  to  gather  figs  from  thistles  continues  to  j 
be  the  outstanding  characteristic  of  the  human 
mind.  Parents  seem  to  hold  this  superstition 
most  rigidly,  school-teachers  are  next  and  col- 
lege professors  are  third  in  the  ascending  scale 
of  inability  to  see  that  the  place  where  things 
begin,  is  at  the  beginning. 

But  just  gaze  for  a  moment  on  the  reverse 
of  the  picture  I  have  presented.  Here  is  born 
a  child  into  a  home  where  from  the  moment  of 
its  appearance,  yes,  long  before  its  appearance, 
there  is  preparation  made  for  the  little 
stranger's  mind  as  well  as  his  body.  Along 
with  the  little  bassinet  which  contains  the  cov- 
ering for  his  body,  there  is  a  well  defined  pro- 
gramme for  his  mind.  There  is  an  arrange- 
ment of  what  his  eyes  shall  look  upon,  what  his 
ears  shall  hear  and  the  form  and  methods  by 
which  the  earliest  ideas  shall  find  their  way  into 
his  mind.  He  shall  be  taught  the  truth,  j 
That  guarantees  his  freedom!  He  shall  be  • 
given  useful  and  interesting  knowledge  of  real 
life.  That  insures  reality  for  him  in  the  outer 
world.  He  shall  be  trained  to  see  with  liis 
eyes  and  hear  with  his  ears  and  he  shall  be 
shown  how  to  coordinate  what  enters  through 
these  two  gates  to  his  mind.     That  will  give 


MIND  FERTILIZATION  71 

him  tools  for  his  mind  and  thoughts  for  his 
tongue.  He  shall  speak,  when  he  speaks  at  all, 
accurately  and  his  linguistic  machinery  shall 
from  the  very  first  help  him,  not  hinder  him. 
He  shall  learn  to  note  sounds  and  distinguish 
sweet  sounds  from  those  that  are  harsh.  He 
shall  try  his  mind  as  he  tries  his  little  arms  and 
legs  and  shall  gain  mental  strength  coordi- 
nately  with  his  physical  growth  so  that  while 
he  walks  on  his  legs,  he  shall  not  creep  in  his 
mind.  He  shall  have  his  mind  food  as  care-  ' 
full}^  chosen  as  his  bodily  food  and  he  shall  be 
kept  mentally  true  and  clean  as  he  is  cleansed  , 
daily  and  bathed  bodily.  Is  the  result  hard 
to  imagine?  Not  at  all.  This  child  will  be 
original,  will  be  fearless,  will  have  the  power 
and  the  interest  of  experimentation,  Avill  sliow 
zest  for  all  kinds  of  knowledge,  and  will  find 
the  gathering  of  information  as  great  a  joy  as 
he  can  possibly  know.  Presently  somebody 
will  call  him  a  "prodigy,"  absolutely  ignorant 
of  tlie  simple  and  entirely  natural  process  l)y 
which  the  all-round  development  of  tlie  child 
has  been  secured.  And  possibly  anotlier  per- 
son will  want  his  progress  "retarded"  lest  he 
become  "prematurely  old"  and  "lose  his  youth"  ; 
and  Heaven  knows  wliat  otlicr  folly  will  be 
foisted  upon  liim  simply  because  liis  mind  was 
properly  cared  for  as  my  old  farmer  friend 


1i         Tin:  SCHOOL  IX  the  home 

])Rparc(l  llie  soil  for  his  tree.  But  all  the  time 
the  natural  law  of  fertilization  and  enrichment 
for  productiveness  has  heen  followed  without 
special  interposition  of  the  Deity  or  miraculous 
assistance  of  any  kind.  The  tree  was  planted 
in  good  ground  and  it  brought  forth  abun- 
dantly.    That  w^as  all  I 


One  of  the  best  and  ablest  men  of  tlie  city  was, 
moreover,  appointed  inspector  of  the  youth  and  he 
gave  command  of  eacli  company  to  the  most  spirited 
and  discreetest  of  those,  called  Irens.  .  .  .  The 
Iren  reposing  himself  after  supper  used  to  order 
some  of  the  boys  to  sing  a  song ;  to  another  he  put 
some  question  which  required  a  judicious  answer,  for 
example:  "Who  was  the  best  man  in  the  city?"  or 
"What  he  thought  of  such  an  action?"  This  accus- 
tomed them  from  their  childhood  to  judge  of  the  vir- 
tues, to  enter  into  the  affairs  of  their  countrymen. 
For  if  one  of  them  was  asked,  "Who  is  a  good  citizen 
or  who  is  an  infamous  one?"  and  hesitated  in  his  an- 
swer he  was  considered  as  a  boy  of  slow  parts  and  of  a 
soul  that  would  not  aspire  to  honor.  The  answer 
was  likewise  to  have  a  reason  assigned  for  it  and 
proof  conceived  in  few  words. 

— Plutarch's  Life  of  Lycurgus. 


IV 

QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS 

If  it  is  true,  as  Isaac  Disraeli  says,  that  "the 
wisdom  of  the  wise  and  the  exjierience  of  the 
ages  may  be  preserved  by  quotation,"  it  is  even 
more  true  that  tlie  knowledge  of  the  past  and 
the  observation  of  the  present  may  be  conveyed 
throufjh  the  art  of  interrogation.  Anvone 
who  recalls  his  school  experience  will  readily 
recognize  the  force  of  this  statement.  In  fact, 
there  is  no  surer  method  of  determining  real 
progress  in  any  direction  than  the  eifective 
use  of  questions  and  answers.  The  Socratic 
method,  which  was  also  the  method  of  all  early 
assemblies  and  teachers,  namely,  of  telling 
things  by  being  asked  about  them  or  creating 
the  materials  of  thought  by  arousing  (questions  > 
in  the  student's  mind  and  then  causing  the  in- 
quirer to  answer  his  own  questions,  remains  [ 
still  the  best  method  of  producing  sound 
mental  action  and  steady  mental  force. 

Questions  have  several  characteristics  which 
are  not  commonly  appreciated  as  having  very 
important   influence    in   the    child   mind.     A 

75 


76  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

question  rightly  put  is  an  exchange  of  ideas 
between  two  living  personalities  who  are  not 
merely  searching  for  knowledge  but  are  com- 
paring ideas.  This  is  what  constitutes  the  chief 
difference  between  a  question  in  a  book  and  an 
oral  question.  No  inquiries  printed  on  a  page 
of  a  book  will  ever  elicit  what  the  same  ques- 
tions will  secure  when  verbally  addressed  from 
one  mind  to  another.  ^Manner,  intonation,  ac- 
cent, the  glance  of  the  eye  and  a  great  many 
other  things  accompany  the  oral  question, 
which  are  absent  from  the  printed  page.  Then 
again,  the  flexibility  of  language  often  admits 
two  or  even  more  interpretations  of  exactly  the 
same  words.  That  admits  at  once  doubt, 
which  is  itself  the  greatest  thought-disperser  I 
know  anything  about.  Only  create  hesitation 
about  the  meaning  of  a  printed  question  and 
you  have  taken  a  most  substantial  step  toward 
making  it  impossible  for  a  child  to  organize  his 
thought  on  that  particular  subject.  This  is 
the  reason  why  teachers  are  so  often  mystified 
by  the  differences  between  the  apparent  attain- 
ments of  a  child  in  class  and  his  utter  failure  to 
make  the  same  impression  w^hen  confronted  by 
an  examination  paper.  And  until  examina- 
tion papers  are  written  in  a  form  which  does 
not  admit  of  ambiguity,  and  few  papers  can  be 
WTitten  which  will  not  admit  of  a  variety  of 


QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS  77 

interpretations,  this  difference  will  always  ap- 
pear. 

This  is  not  confined  to  children  and  the 
student  body  alone.  It  has  taken  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  United  States  twenty  years  to 
find  out  just  wliat  the  law  relating  to  huge  in- 
dustrial combinations  means.  And  apparently 
the  final  decision  has  created  as  much  uneasi- 
ness as  to  its  finality  as  the  original  law  did. 
For  years  the  best  lawjxrs  in  the  land  struggled 
to  find  out  just  what  the  exact  legal  relation  of 
their  great  enterprises  to  the  statute  was. 
And  yet  it  was  drawn  by  men  of  vast  experi- 
ence in  law-making,  men  who  had  been  ad- 
visers to  great  interests  for  many  years  and 
who,  if  anybod}'  knew,  might  have  been  as- 
sumed capable  of  saying  what  they  meant. 
Yet  when  the  Supreme  Court  came  to  review 
that  act,  at  least  one  distinguished  member  of 
the  court  wliich  rendered  the  decision  stated 
that  the  court  had  read  into  the  law  something 
which  was  not  there  at  all!  Why  should  a 
child  be  expected  automatically  to  guess  just 
what  the  teacher  had  in  mind  in  writing  any 
question  unless  it  is  so  plain  as  to  answer  it- 
self? The  simple  truth  is,  that  anyone  who 
knows  anything  about  the  reading  and  mark- 
ing of  examination  ])apcrs  knows  that  different 
markers  will  give  totally  different  valuations 


78  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

to  exactly  the  same  reply.  It  is  the  personal 
equation  wliich  has  heen  taken  out  of  the  ques- 
tion and  the  question  is,  in  fact,  not  a  question 
properly  at  all  when  considered  from  the  true 
standpoint  of  a  test  of  knowledge.  It  is  pos- 
sible in  certain  forms  of  mathematics  to  give 
exact  questions  and  for  this  reason  mathemat- 
ics have  the  least  possible  educational  value  of 
all  studies.  But  the  moment  you  get  into  a 
region  where  active  thought  is  employed,  the 
personal  equation  is  so  imj^ortant  that,  as 
stated,  unless  the  question  practically  answers 
itself  there  is  room  for  an  almost  endless  va- 
riety of  answers.  Turn  a  moment  to  another 
profession.  All  successful  medical  practice 
turns  upon  successful  diagnosis.  But  what 
are  the  facts  when  you  have  a  serious  case  of 
sickness?  Xot  infrequently  the  very  best 
minds  will  give  totally  different  interpreta- 
tions of  exactly  the  same  data.  The  elements 
of  experience,  personality,  habits  of  mind, 
moral  steadiness  and  a  great  many  other  things 
enter  into  the  diagnosis  together  wuth  the  med- 
ical imagination,  all  of  which  suggest  different 
courses  of  procedure.  This  is  within  the  com- 
mon knowledge  of  all  people.  Why  should  a 
child  be  expected  from  a  printed  question  to 
find  the  exact  reply  which  was  in  the  teacher's 
mind  in  framing  the  question?     And  if,  in  the 


QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS  79 

stating  of  the  question,  there  was  the  addi- 
tional desire,  and  it  is  not  infrequently  present, 
to  confuse  the  student  or  at  least  to  trick  him 
into  saying  what  the  question  does  not  call  for, 
by  deliberate  ambiguity,  who  is  responsible  for 
the  absurd  and  stupid  answers  with  which  all 
examinatioi'  papers  abound?  There  is  hardly 
a  greater  indictment  possible  of  much  educa- 
tional procedure  than  the  methods  which  edu- 
cators employ  to  test  their  students. 

Now  this  whole  matter  goes  back  much  far- 
ther than  most  people  suppose.  The  art  of 
questioning  is  an  art.  That  must  be  recognized 
first  of  all.  And  as  an  art  it  must  be  culti- 
vated and  because  it  is  an  art  subject  to  culti- 
vation there  is  nothing  particularly  mysterious 
or  baffling  about  it.  In  a  similar  way  the  art 
of  replying  is  also  an  art  and  may  be  cultivated, 
and  there  is  nothing  mysterious  about  that. 
And  where  the  relations  of  the  questioner  and 
the  questioned  are  sound  relations,  art  will 
develop  naturally  and  will  prove  one  of  the 
most  fertile  instruments  of  mental  develop- 
ment. The  true  manner  of  discovering 
wliethcr  certain  knowledge  has  been  mastered 
and  is  a  permanent  part  of  the  mental  furni- 
ture or  not  turns  very  largely  upon  this  item 
of  questions  and  answers.  To  frame  a  ques 
tion  properly  constitutes  the  fine  art  of  teach 


ach-  )J 


80  TIIK  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

in^i*-.  And  to  begin  tlie  framing  of  questions 
properly  witli  little  ehildren  is  to  prepare  them 
for  iiiant  strides  in  intellectual  advancement. 
Who  ever  thinks  of  putting  questions  to  little 
children  with  exactness  and  with  the  purpose 
of  causing  exact  mental  effort  on  the  part  of 
the  child? 

To  give  one  more  illustration  in  this  matter, 
I  take  from  the  five  text-books  on  Virgil's 
"a-Eneid"  before  me  the  following:  Here  is  a 
line  containing  a  noun  in  the  ablative  case. 
Two  of  the  five  text-books  in  the  notes  call  it 
a  dati\'e,  the  forms  being  alike.  The  other 
three  call  it  an  ablative,  but  all  three  differ 
among  themselves  as  to  what  kind  of  an  abla- 
tive it  is!  But  someone  will  say  that  is  a  for- 
eign language.  True  enough.  But  I  have 
also  before  me  at  tliis  moment  ten  English 
papers  in  which  a  high-school  teacher  had 
given  what  I  have  no  doubt  she  supjDosed  w^as 
an  accurate  statement  of  what  she  wished  her 
students  to  do.  But  four  of  the  students  did 
one  thing,  three  did  another  and  three  did 
something  still  different  and  none  of  them  did 
what  the  teacher  declares  she  called  for !  And 
they  constituted  more  than  half  of  the  class. 
Xow  obviously  somebody  was  at  fault.  The 
case  is  made  even  more  interesting  by  the  fact 
that  five  out  of  the  ten  are  the  best  students  in 


QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS  81 

the  class  judged  by  their  previous  markings. 
Now  it  would  be  unfair  in  this  particular  case 
to  hold  that  she  is  an  exception  among  the  great 
mass  of  teachers  of  high-school  English.  jNIy 
own  opinion  is  that  she  is  an  exceptionally 
capable  one.  But  the  fact  still  remains  that 
her  ambiguity  in  stating  a  question  which,  as 
I  think,  admitted  of  clear  statement,  threw 
half  her  class,  and  the  better  half  at  that,  into 
absolute  confusion.  I  have  seen  history  papers 
in  which  the  confusion  was  even  worse  con- 
founded. When,  therefore,  one  sees  a  news- 
paper article  announcing  the  fearful  and  won- 
derful information  which  examination  papers 
reveal,  it  will  be  well  to  remember  that  per- 
haps the  English  in  which  these  questions  were 
put,  was  in  some  instances,  at  least,  almost  as 
fearful  and  wonderful  as  the  replies.  And 
the  absolute  elimination  of  the  personal  rela- 
tion, through  which  knowledge  comes  most 
readily,  most  accurately  and  with  greatest 
logical  coherence,  tends  to  make  the  matter 
more  comprehensible.  I  know  any  number  of 
persons  whose  letters  so  alisolutely  misrepre- 
sent them  that  tliey  would  not  possibly  be  rec- 
ognized by  them.  In  fact  I  lately  made  an 
experiment  along  this  line. 

I  called  together  one  evening  five  young  per- 
sons from  whom  I  liad  previously  received  let- 


82  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

ters  on  the  same  subject.  I  asked  two  very 
gifted  persons,  teachers  of  effectiveness  and 
conversationalists  of  talent  and  skill,  to  meet 
them  and  on  tlie  basis  of  an  evening's  inter- 
course with  these  young  people  write  the  names 
of  the  authors  upon  their  own  letters,  that  is, 
identify  the  author  as  personally  known  in  her 
written  work.  The  result  was  absolutely  ludi- 
crous. In  only  one  case  was  there  any  sem- 
blance of  agreement  and  this  was  afterward 
confessed  as  being  induced  by  something  that 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  matter  of  the  letters. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  there  was  nothing  in  the 
letters  that  in  the  slightest  degree  made  it  pos- 
sible to  link  the  written  document  with  the 
living  person.  Afterward  I  gave  some  in- 
struction to  one  of  these  persons,  with  the  re- 
sult that  there  began  to  be  some  coherence  be- 
tween the  person  and  the  document  she  wrote. 
The  letters  were  full  of  blunders  of  all  kinds. 
The  spoken  speech  was  almost  faultless  in  so 
far  as  a  general  conversation  reveals  such 
faults.  The  grammatical  absurdities  which 
these  young  people  wrote  would  have  made 
them  impossible  for  an  evening's  conversation. 
Yet  they  were  interesting  people  and  capable 
people.  The  simple  fact  was,  that,  asked  orally 
about  the  same  things  concerning  which  they 
wrote    brokenly,    stupidly    and    blunderingly, 


QUESTIOXS  AND  ANSWERS  83 

they  were  reflective,  measurably  exact  and  in- 
teresting. And  between  the  two  there  was  a 
great  gulf  fixed. 

From  all  this  I  wish  simply  to  establish  the 
extreme  importance  of  the  personal  equation 
in  the  matter  of  giving  and  extracting  knowl- 
edge. ]My  point  is  that  this  process  should  be- 
gin so  early  that  the  necessary  allowances  in 
a  child's  mind  will  be  made  and  such  judgment 
developed  and  exercised  that  the  almost  neces- 
sary ambiguity,  inherent  in  a  language  like  the 
English  language,  will  be  met  by  the  ability  to 
think  around  the  subject  and  make  some  just 
and  correct  inferences  as  to  what  the  question 
probably  means.  This  involves  the  cultivation 
in  the  home  of  the  art  of  questioning  and  of  an- 
swering questions  and  of  interlinking  factual 
knowledge  with  inferential  judgments  so  as  to 
make  available  whatever  knowledge  there  is  in 
the  child  mind. 

Wise  questioning  almost  always  turns  upon 
the  nature  of  the  relation  of  the  vocabulary  of 
the  questioner  to  that  of  the  child.  How  often 
parents  are  puzzled  by  questions  which  chil- 
dren ask  about  their  school  work  merely  be- 
cause it  is  put  in  terms  which  they  do  not  un- 
derstand. How  often  have  I  heard  a  parent 
say  to  a  child,  "Oh,  is  that  what  you  meant?" 
wliich  simply  means  that  the  school  had  one 


84  TIIK  SCHOOL  I\  THE  HOME 

vocabulary  of  the  subject  and  the  parent  an- 
other. But  hardly  less  frequently  the  teacher 
lias  one  vocabulary  and  the  student  another. 
Now,  as  stated,  a  i)art  of  this  is  inevitable.  It 
must  be  bridged,  if  bridged  at  all,  by  the  full- 
ness of  the  vocabulary  of  the  child,  since  the 
child  has  no  opportunity  to  place  the  teacher 
under  examination.  The  rights,  at  present, 
are  all  on  one  side  and  the  duties  all  on  the 
other. 

The  earliest  years  of  life  are  the  ones  in 
"which  the  mind  is  most  eager  and  in  which  the 
inquiries  come  with  least  artificiality  and  with 
the  greatest  directness.  That  is  the  time  to 
answer  with  the  most  abundant  information, 
with  the  largest  relationships  and  with  the 
widest  possible  collaboration.  For  example, 
there  is  a  war  in  progress  and  the  names  of 
places  and  the  civilization  of  the  contending 
nations  are  discussed  at  the  breakfast  table. 
That  is  the  time  to  answer  the  child's  question 
with  the  greatest  possible  fullness.  It  is  a 
time  not  merely  to  answer  with  clearness  and 
precision  the  thing  called  for,  but  to  link  it 
with  the  great  variety  of  collateral  things 
which  are  at  that  moment  so  related  to  the 
question  asked  as  to  enable  the  parent  to  teach 
simultaneously  history,  geography,  manners, 
morals,  language,  philology  and  much  more 


QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS  85 

beside.  Here  again  the  outcry  will  be  at 
once,  "Oh,  but  we  have  not  the  equipment  to 
do  all  this."  INIy  reply  is,  that  this  is  non- 
sense, for  even  the  daily  newspapers,  the  best 
of  them,  do  this  very  tiling  and  it  involves  in 
its  least  capable  form  merely  the  intelligent 
gathering  of  special  news  articles  and  the 
careful  reading  of  them,  looking  at  a  map 
and  the  intelligent  and  careful  scrutiny  of  it 
and  a  walk  to  even  the  most  meagerly 
equipped  town  librar}"  and  the  examination  of 
the  catalogue  for  a  book  or  two  on  the  sub- 
ject. All  this  should  come  out  of  a  question 
brought  forward  under  the  circumstances  in- 
dicated. The  same  thing  is  true  concerning 
inventions  or  great  events  and  is  specially  true 
concerning  great  personalities. 

It  will  be  readily  seen  that  later  on  ques- 
tions in  this  field  will  instantly  bring  back  the 
circumstances  under  which  the  information 
was  originally  gained,  it  will  be  allied  with  a 
great  variety  of  miscellaneous  information  se- 
cured in  connection  with  it  and  any  question 
in  this  area  by  any  outside  agency  will  be  in- 
terpreted not  only  in  the  light  of  what  it  ac- 
tually asks  but  in  the  light  of  the  full  infor- 
mation and  the  discussion  in  which  it  was  first 
acquired.  You  have  in  fact  given  to  the  child 
a  number  of  means  of  finding  out,  in  case  of 


86  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

doubt  or  ambiguity,  wliat  is  probably  re- 
({uired.  Witli  little  children  the  most  trivial 
tilings  can  thus  be  linked  with  solid  knowledge 
so  that  the  results  are  almost  beyond  belief. 
Nor  must  all  this  be  supposed  to  lead  to,  or 
necessarily  involve,  undue  or  unpleasant  ma- 
turity on  the  part  of  the  child.  Any  infor- 
mation which  comes  in  a  natural  way  is  inter- 
esting and  has  the  accompaniments  which 
make  it  possible  to  be  linked  with  what  is  al- 
ready in  the  child's  mind.  The  fact  that  a 
child  asks,  "What  kind  of  people  are  the 
Turks?"  makes  the  natural  background  for 
finding  out  w^hat  induced  that  question  and 
then  putting  in  w^ith  strong  and  sumptuous 
liberality  the  background  which  will  make 
that  question,  when  asked  again,  luminous 
with  many  kinds  of  replies.  To  tell  what 
kind  of  people  the  Turks  are  gives  the  natural 
opportunity  for  teaching  history,  for  recall- 
ing inspiring  romance,  for  dealing  with  fun- 
damental questions  of  morality  and  religion 
—  the  foundation  problems  of  civilization  and 
humanity.  Why  should  it  be  postponed?  I 
mention  this  particular  example  because  I  saw 
some  years  ago  the  question  on  a  paper,  "De- 
scribe the  Turks."  It  does  not  require  much 
imagination  to  picture  the  absurd  confusion 
of  the  answers.     So  absurd  a  question  invited 


QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS  87 

the  absurd  replies  which  it  received.  But 
there  was  one  child  that  told  something  of  the 
Turkish  Empire  in  Europe,  something  about 
Mohammed  and  JNIohammedanism,  something 
about  the  status  of  women  in  Oriental  lands 
and  finally  a  description  of  the  jNIosque  of  St. 
Sophia  seen  at  a  stereopticon  exhibition.  But 
it  had  absolutely  nothing  to  do  with  what  the 
teacher  who  asked  the  question  had  in  mind. 

The  psychology  of  this  matter  of  question- 
ing is  most  interesting.  A  child's  question  is 
really  an  exhibit  of  its  method  and  premier 
interests.  When  young  children  question, 
you  have  generally  a  simple  idea  and  while 
it  is  in  itself  a  simple  idea,  its  form  almost  al- 
ways reveals  the  general  notions  and  leading 
thoughts  out  of  which  it  has  come.  When  a 
child  asks  a  j^erfectly  stupid  question,  one 
which  does  not  readily  indicate  out  of  Avhat 
mental  movements  it  arose  or  what  soil  gen- 
erated it,  tliere  is  the  very  best  of  reasons  for 
going  at  once  into  the  business  of  finding  out 
what  is  the  matter  with  its  fundamental  men- 
tal operations,  because  children  do  not  usually 
ask  stupid  questions.  Sheer  and  absolute  ig- 
norance does  not  ask  stupid  questions.  Ab- 
solute innocence  asks  the  directest  questions 
possible  without  fear  and  without  shame. 
Stupidity    arises    from    confusion    of    ideas. 


88  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

And  if  this  confusion  is  met  with  more  con- 
fusion, you  simply  2)ile  up  trouble  for  the  la- 
ter years  of  the  student  life.  Such  a  situation 
sliould  be  met  by  intelligent  questioning  as  to 
whence  the  original  question,  how  induced, 
with  M'hat  interest  in  mind,  and,  in  fact,  the 
bringing  out  of  the  entire  mental  furniture  of 
the  child  into  the  open  so  that  what  is  rubbish 
will  readily  reveal  itself.  Not  to  do  this  is 
to  add  to  every  subsequent  handling  of  the 
theme  elements  which  cannot  possibly  do 
otherwise  than  destroy  clearness  in  thought  or 
successful  handling  of  knowledge  gained.  I 
know  no  region  where  greater  stupidity  pre- 
vails than  in  circles  where  it  ought  not  to  ex- 
ist, namely,  academic  assemblies,  and  I  have 
very  lately  heard  the  president  of  a  great  uni- 
versity, seeing  the  discussion  of  the  theme 
upon  which  he  had  spoken,  take  on  a  form 
M'hich  indicated  either  that  he  had  mistaken  his 
subject  or  the  assembly  was  bent  on  discussing 
something  else,  rise  in  his  place  and  explain 
to  the  hundreds  of  teachers  present  what  he 
understood  himself  as  having  been  invited  to 
discuss  and  state  that  the  discussion  related 
to  something  quite  different  and  proceed  to 
talk  about  the  subject  de  novo.  Here  you 
had  evidently  a  question  dubiously  stated  by 
tlie  programme  committee,  its  import  misin- 


QUESTIONS  AXD  ANSWERS  89 

terpreted  by  a  university  president,  an  as- 
sembly of  teachers  failing  to  connect  with  the 
president's  interpretation  and  finally  an  effort 
(not  wholly  successful  as  it  appeared  to  me) 
to  connect  in  the  final  stages  of  the  discus- 
sion! And  3'et  it  related  to  a  subject  in 
wliich  the  whole  academic  world  at  this  mo- 
ment is  vitally  interested.  And  yet  w^e  have 
the  hardihood  to  mark  down  children  for  their 
failure  to  understand  oftentimes  what  their 
teachers  and  examiners  mean  in  their  papers! 
The  fact  is,  that  questions  and  answers  as- 
sume that  the  people  asking  and  the  people 
answering  live  within  mental  speaking  dis- 
tance of  each  other.  The  imiversity  president 
just  referred  to  was  thinking  of  a  dif- 
ferent world  from  that  in  which  the  great 
assembly  of  teachers  w^ere  living.  That  was 
perfectly  plain.  After  the  first  few  moments 
they  saw  or  felt  that,  and  their  minds  refused 
to  connect  it  with  what  they  were  thinking 
about  most.  This  is  exactly  what  happens 
with  children  when  much  so-called  instruction 
takes  place.  The  important  thing  is  to  get 
the  mental  touch  which  links  the  question  to 
the  interests,  the  personality  of  the  child,  and 
which  admits  of  the  utilization  of  previous 
knowledge  and  inquiry.  Xowhere  can  this 
situation  be  secin"cd   with  such   ])crfection  of 


90  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

detail,  with  such  satisfactory  and  suggestive 
surroundings,  as  in  the  home.  The  natural 
affections,  the  habitual  association  of  ideas,  all 
tend  to  make  an  adequate  and  satisfactory 
framework  for  both  the  question  and  the  an- 
swer. And  the  comparison  of  question  and 
answer  instantly  opens  other  avenues  of  infor- 
mation, and  few  occasions  of  such  intercourse 
stop  with  a  single  question.  What  happens 
is,  that  one  thing  leads  to  another  and  before 
that  question  is  disposed  of,  many  other 
things  have  been  opened  for  inspection,  more 
and  other  questions  have  been  raised  and  the 
foundation  has  been  laid  for  a  resumption  of 
the  instruction  at  another  time.  There  is  an- 
other rather  important  distinction  between 
questioning  at  school  and  questioning  at  home, 
the  influence  of  which  is  significant  in  the 
development  of  a  child's  mental  life.  An- 
swering at  school  contemplates  as  a  rule  sim- 
ply accuracy,  namely,  satisfaction  of  the 
supposed  desire  of  the  instructor.  But  ques- 
tioning in  the  home  takes  on  the  aspect 
of  a  search  for  truth  as  distinguished  from 
mere  accuracy.  It  is  not  unknown  both  in 
school  and  college  for  young  people  to  come 
to  understand  that  this  or  that  teacher  requires 
certain  replies  to  certain  questions.  Indeed 
many   such   "standard"    answers    are   handed 


/ 


QUESTIOXS  AND  ANSWERS  91 

down  from  one  class  to  another,  constructions 
of  particular  passages  in  Latin,  peculiarities 
in  pronunciation,  habits  of  emphasis  and  the 
like.  In  nearly  every  large  college  it  is  pos- 
sible to  buy  from  certain  persons  who  have 
them  for  sale,  the  ready-made  materials  for  • 
passing  examinations  in  some  courses  because  / 
the  kind  of  answer  demanded  is  well  defined  ^ 
and  well  known.  All  that  is  required  is  that 
the  "right"  answers  shall  be  given.  But  this 
is  not  the  case  when  it  comes  to  the  interplay 
of  the  parental  and  the  filial  mind.  Here  the 
subject  is  up  because  of  its  intrinsic  interest 
to  one  or  the  other  party  to  the  interrogatory. 
If  it  begins  with  the  child,  the  parent  by  rea- 
son of  interest  in  the  advancement  of  the 
child's  knowledge  and  culture,  will  make  the 
most  of  the  opportunity  to  give  much  infor- 
mation and  give  it  with  reference  to  the  total 
life  of  the  child  and  especially  as  a  veracious 
foundation  for  judgment,  for  comparison 
and  future  light.  jNIere  correctness  gives 
place  to  a  larger  ideal  of  the  matter  in  hand. 
If  it  originates  with  the  parent,  the  child  will 
naturally  also  presume  that  the  subject  itself 
is  invested  with  importance  and  interest  ut- 
terly apart  from  his  ability  or  inability  to  fur- 
nish a  correct  answer.  Tliis  creates  a  totally 
different  situation  and  one  in  which  the  ra- 


92  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

tional  search  for  truth  is  begun  and  which, 
persisted  in,  creates  a  habit  of  intellectual  ve- 
racity which  is  as  important  an  adjunct  to  the 
intellectual  hfe  as  knowledge  itself  and  per- 
haps even  more  important.  And  it  comes 
into  the  child's  life  associated  with  parental 
authority  and  habit,  which  is  best  of  all. 

The  art  of  answering  questions  is  one  which 
in  cultivation  has  a  decisive  influence  in  train- 
ing the  young  mind  to  seek  out  the  essential 
from  the  trivial  or  unessential  elements  of  any 
given  subject.  The  most  simple  inquiry  may 
be  answered  in  such  a  way  as  to  leave  a  fine 
residuum  in  the  mind  of  a  child  of  deep  re- 
spect for  knowledge  and  pleasure  in  having 
elicited  so  weighty  a  result  from  so  simple  a 
question.  Nothing  makes  a  j^oung  mind  glow 
with  enthusiasm  like  the  experience  of  seeing 
that  a  simj)le  question  has  loosed  a  great 
stream  of  information  and  produced  what  the 
inquirer  did  not  dream  was  involved  when  he 
sj^oke.  Tapping  a  full  mind  is  an  exercise 
which  yields  great  satisfaction  both  ways. 
For  children  it  is  a  perennial  source  of  dehght 
and  once  experienced  they  will  come  back 
again  and  again  with  questions,  if  only  for 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  what  their  questions 
will  bring  forth.  Now  out  of  this  fullness 
there  is  a  choice  to  be  made.     The  wise  and 


QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS  93 

observant  parent  will  make  rapid  analysis  of 
what  associations  have  brought  out  the  ques- 
tion, he  will  select  a  few  leading  or  striking 
things  in  connection  with  it  and  will  leave  cer- 
tain   determinative    marks    upon    the    mind 
around  which  the  less  important  details  will 
readily   group   themselves.     This   is   an   easy 
enough  process  to  the  mature  mind,  but  not 
so  easy  for  the  j^oung.     But  seeing  the  thing 
done   often  and  seeing  discrimination  made, 
the  habit  of  discrimination  speedily  arises  and 
the  imitative  faculty  very  soon  asserts  itself 
in  the  repetition  of  the  phases,  the  attitudes 
of  mind  and  expressions  by  which  the  choices 
are   indicated.     Thus   a   certain   teacher   who 
was  in  the  habit  of  introducing  almost  every 
statement  of  fact  by  the  phrase  "in  my  judg- 
ment,"   soon    found   that    his    students    were 
adopting  it  and   very  soon  after  that   were 
giving    evidence     rather    clearly    that    they 
were  actually  referring  matters  to  the  "judg- 
ment," meaning  by  this  they  were  exercising 
the  powers  of  discrimination  which  they  pos- 
sessed and  making  replies  which  indicated  se- 
lection instead   of  mere   repetition.     It   does 
not   require    much   tliought   to   see   what    an 
enormous  advance  had  been  made  when  the 
children  had  learned  that. 

Little  children  especially  are  fond  of  re- 


94  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

cilals  of  personal  experience  and,  themselves 
properly  guided,  offer  beautiful  narratives 
which  are  the  most  natural  material  one  could 
desire  for  the  training  of  the  mind.  I  have 
known  of  a  story  composed  by  the  children 
among  whom  it  had  its  rise,  to  continue  for 
several  years,  known  among  them  as  "The 
Story,"  in  which  each  child  in  the  nursery  took 
its  turn  before  they  went  to  sleep  in  adding 
a  chapter.  To  listen  to  this  process  was  see- 
ing an  example  of  the  growth  of  pure  and 
powerful  narrative  English  wliich  I  have  not 
seen  matched  anywhere.  The  story  itself  was 
enriched  by  suggestions  by  each  of  the  four, 
by  inquiry  as  to  the  reasonableness  of  this  or 
that  adventure,  by  promptings  where  the  im- 
agination of  one  or  the  other  was  exhausted, 
by  supplying  of  details,  if  for  anyone  there 
seemed  to  be  a  need  of  assistance  in  this  direc- 
tion, correction  by  the  older  of  the  inaccura- 
cies, verbal  or  logical  or  practical,  on  the  part 
of  the  younger,  and  so  "The  Story"  went  on 
for  sometliing  like  five  years  constantly  aug- 
mented by  the  growing  knowledge  and  expe- 
rience of  all  the  children.  It  ceased  only 
when  the  children  grew  old  enough  to  occupy 
separate  rooms.  I  often  noticed  while  this 
story  was  going  on,  the  method  of  asking 
questions  and  the  replies  which  were  made.    I 


QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS  95 

noticed  the  quick  demand  for  reasonableness 
and  coherence.  I  observed  especially  how  a 
question  induced  by  want  of  appreciation  of 
the  view-point  of  an  older  child  by  a  younger, 
was  accompanied  by  an  explanation  and  ex- 
cursus which  made  the  matter  clear,  and  the 
story  did  not  go  on  until  this  was  done.  In 
how  many  school  rooms  or  homes  is  a  subject 
held  up,  even  when  it  is  made  the  subject  of 
formal  inquiry  and  discussion,  until  there  is 
absolute  clarity  in  the  point  of  view  between 
the  questioner  and  the  questioned?  And  yet 
this  is  what  these  children  demanded  naturally 
from  each  other  and  what  they  received  in 
response  to  that  demand.  I  have  rarely 
heard  a  stupid  reply  to  a  clear  question  among 
Httle  children.  I  have  often  heard  both 
stupid  questions  and  stupid  replies  among 
adults. 

Obviously  what  has  been  said  calls  for  a 
rigorous  and  intelligent  choice  of  all  the  mate- 
rial which  comes  to  the  children  of  the  home 
for  the  formation  and  nurture  of  their  intel- 
lectual life.  Such  a  censorship  was  long  fore- 
seen and  recalls  a  striking  passage  in  the 
Republic  of  Plato: 

"You  know  also  that  the  beginning  is  the 
chiefcst  part  of  any  work,  especially  in  a 
young  and  tender  thing;  for  that  is  the  time 


96  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

at  which  the  character  is  heing  formed  and 
most  rea(hly  receives  the  desired  impression. 

"Quite  true. 

"And  shall  we  just  carelessly  allow  children 
to  hear  any  casual  tales  which  may  be  framed 
by  casual  persons  and  to  receive  into  their 
minds  notions  which  are  the  very  opposite  of 
those  which  are  held  by  them  w^hen  they  are 
grown  up? 

"We  cannot. 

"Then  the  first  thing  will  be  to  have  a  cen- 
sorsliip  of  the  w^riters  of  fiction  and  let  the 
censors  receive  any  tale  of  fiction  which  is 
good  and  reject  the  bad;  and  w^e  will  desire 
mothers  and  nurses  to  tell  their  cliildren  the 
authorized  ones  only.  Let  them  fashion  the 
mind  with  these  tales  even  more  fondly  than 
they  form  the  body  with  their  hands,  and  most 
of  those  which  are  now^  in  use  must  be  dis- 
carded." 

Here  you  have  the  principle,  from  a  most 
ancient  and  honorable  source,  which  should 
guide  to-day  even  more  than  could  possibly 
have  been  conceived  as  necessary  then.  If 
ever  there  was  a  call  for  censorship  in  the 
home  as  to  what  materials  shall  go  into  the 
mind  stuff  of  its  children  there  is  such  a  call 
now.  And  this  in  the  interest  of  a  sound  men- 
tal development  is  to  be  performed  "even  more 


QUESTIONS  AND  ANSWERS  97 

fondl}^"  than  we  undertake  the  tasks  of  the 
care  and  development  of  the  physical  life. 
There  is  one  way  and  one  way  only  of  finding 
out  what  impressions  are  being  made  upon 
children  by  what  they  read  and  what  they 
hear.  That  way  is  by  careful,  painstaking 
and  intelligent  interrogation.  It  may  be  laid 
down  as  a  general  principle  easily  capable  of 
verification  that  the  subjects  upon  which  chil- 
dren develop  false,  dangerous  and  often  vi- 
cious ideas,  are  those  upon  which  there  has 
been  no  free  inquiry  on  the  part  of  parents 
and  no  free  and  honest  answer  on  the  part  of 
children. 


My  father  trained  me  to  avoid  each  vice  by  setting 
a  mark  on  it  by  examples.  Whenever  he  would  ex- 
hort me  to  live  a  thrifty,  frugal  life  contented  with 
what  he  had  saved  for  me,  he  would  say,  "Do  3'ou  not 
see  how  hard  it  is  for  the  son  of  Albius  to  live  and 
how  needy  Barrus  is  a  signal  warning  to  prevent  any- 
one from  wasting  his  inheritance?"  If  he  would  de- 
ter me  from  dishonorable  love,  he  would  say,  "Do  not 
be  like  Sectanus" ;  to  save  me  from  an  adulterous 
passion  when  I  might  enjoy  an  unforbidden  love,  he 
used  to  say,  "Trebonius'  exposure  was  not  credita- 
ble." Thus  he  molded  my  boyhood  by  these  words. 
— Horace  on  Parental  Teaching  through  Examples. 


V 

THE  ELIMINATION  OF  WASTE 

When  one  of  our  great  battleships  re- 
cently was  making  her  trial  run  for  accept- 
ance by  the  government,  I  noticed  the 
statement  that  the  coal  used  on  that  occasion 
was  all  of  a  specially  selected  and  hand-picked 
kind,  chosen  M'ith  a  view  to  getting  the  maxi- 
mum of  heat  and  sustained  steam  for  the 
boilers  and  thus  making  the  greatest  speed 
possible.  That  incident  may  well  stand  as 
the  suggestive  illustration  for  the  doctrine 
which  this  chapter  is  to  set  forth.  If  you  will 
look  about  you,  you  will  observe  that  what  the 
shipbuilders  did  for  their  ship,  broadly 
speaking,  Nature  is  doing  all  the  time.  She 
seeks  to  produce  the  largest  amount  that  she 
possibly  can.  She  is  jealous  of  anything 
that  hinders  her  processes  and  employs  every 
possible  means  to  get  around  whatever  stands 
in  her  way  and  get  productiveness  for  the 
forces  at  work  within  her.  Thus  your  flying 
seed  finds  the  only  spot  in  a  wall  tliat  has  a 
fragment  of  earth  in  it  and  germinates  there. 
Something    grows    everywhere.     No    matter 

99 


100         TiiK  sciioor,  i\  THE  home 

how  cold  or  how  warm  the  climate  happens  to 
he,  some  form  of  life  exists  and  thrives  and 
modifies  itself  to  suit  the  conditions  and  then 
propagates  with  all  its  might.  INIan  is  the 
only  animal  that  is  deliberately  lazy  that  I 
know  anything  about  and  his  laziness  is, 
partly,  a  result. 

Ease  of  performance  and  delight  in 
achievement  both  grow  as  they  are  made  sim- 
pler of  attainment,  and  simplicity  is  generally 
secured  by  the  elimination  of  waste.  It  is 
highl}^  probable  that  the  most  wasteful  per- 
formance now  going  on  among  us  is  in  educa- 
tion or,  putting  it  otherwise,  in  brain  power. 
I  have  already  spoken  of  the  neglect  to  furnish 
the  materials  for  growth  in  the  minds  of  chil- 
dren. But  it  is  not  enough  simply  to  supply 
materials,  it  is  also  needful  that  w^aste  material 
shall  be  steadily  removed  from  the  minds  of 
children  and  room  kept  for  the  acquisition  of 
fresh,  new  and  more  i^roductive  mental  pabu- 
lum that  the  growing  child  shall  constantly 
face  something  which  challenges  the  maxi- 
mum of  its  ability  and  does  not  permit  the 
habit  of  laziness,  in  whatever  form  it  may  dis- 
guise itself,  to  grow. 

Perhaps  I  can  best  illustrate  this  by  what 
I  know  about  elementary  educational  proc- 
esses as  I  have  seen  them  at  work  in  Boston. 


THE  ELIMINATION  OF  WASTE  101 

For  years  it  was  generally  uiulerstood  that  tlie 
work  in  the  fifth  grade  was  not  an  achance 
upon  the  fourth  grade,  but  was  a  sort  of  re- 
view and  I  know  from  my  own  observation 
that  many  a  briglit  child  under  direction  and 
observing  parental  guidance  simply  skipped 
that  grade  as  a  nuisance  and  waste  of  time. 
Many  children,  however,  spent  the  year  in 
that  grade  and  in  consequence  formed  habits 
of  listlessness  and  inattention  which  years  did 
not  enable  them  to  coi-rect.  I  have  observed 
also  that  certain  forms  of  arithmetic  and 
grammar  and  other  studies,  geography  being 
also  one,  are  taken  several  times  first  in  a  very 
crude,  elementary  form,  then  in  a  higher 
form,  and  finally  in  what  is  the  last  touch, 
before  the  grades  are  left.  Now  just  wliy 
any  subject  should  be  taught  more  than  once 
is  to  me  an  insoluble  puzzle.  Children  can  be 
taught  square  root  for  example  once  for  all 
time.  Why  should  they  puzzle  through  it 
once  haltingly  and  insecurely  on  the  theory 
that  they  are  going  to  liave  it  more  tlioronglily 
later  on?  Wliy  should  they  dabble  witli  the 
metric  system  a  little  on  one  occasion,  know- 
ing that  they  will  have  it  more  thorouglily 
later  on?  Why  should  not  the  metric  system 
be  learned  once  for  all  and  then  let  the  mind 
go  on  to  sometliing  else!'     Unused  knowledge 


102  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

is  like  unused  furniture  in  storerooms,  it  may 
come  in  liandj^  sometime,  but  most  people 
know  tliat  it  generally  means  that  finally  the 
stored  things  get  so  dirty  or  banged  up  that 
they  are  useless  and  finally  sold  as  junk  or 
given  away.  But  this  is  exactly  what  we  do 
with  the  minds  of  little  children.  We  permit 
a  mass  of  things  to  lumber  up  the  mind  and 
keep  them  pegging  away  on  stuiF  which  may 
or  may  not  be  useful  sometime,  and  all  the 
while  are  clogging  the  brain  and  preventing 
the  free  play  of  the  mind  on  new  and  advanced 
material  for  the  production  of  thought  and 
the  stimulation  of  efficiency.  So  much  fun 
has  been  poked  at  the  useless  facts  stuffed 
into  children's  minds  about  things  which, 
when  known,  are  of  no  particular  use  that 
that  is  not  necessary  here. 

If  you  want  sustained  mental  power,  you 
must  have  the  mental  powers  kept  free  from 
hindrances  in  the  shape  of  harassing  wastes 
which  clog  the  mind  and  prevent  steady  and 
enduring  concentration.  The  damage  which 
comes  of  waste  in  the  mind  is  that  it  prevents 
concentration,  and  there  is  no  surer  way  of 
destroying  the  powers  of  concentration,  so 
called,  than  by  permitting  things  to  linger  in 
the  mind  which  have  no  business  there.  It  is 
this  habit,  which  so  often  causes  a  phenome- 


THE  ELIMINATION  OF  WASTE  103 

non,  with  which  most  parents  are  perfectly 
famihar.  A  child,  up  to  a  certain  point, 
seems  to  he  developing-  naturally  and  satis- 
factorily; he  is  interested  in  his  work  and 
seems  to  he  gaining  knowledge  and  self-con- 
trol and  otherwise  making  real  and  suhstan- 
tial  progress.  All  of  a  sudden  he  stops  from 
no  cause  that  can  be  discerned  and  gets  care- 
less, hstless  and  ceases  to  he  interested  in  his 
work.  Inquiry  will  usually  reveal  that  hy 
easy  stages  minor  and  useless  things  have 
diverted  the  mind  from  its  original  quest.  It 
will  be  found  that  the  mind  is  clogged  with  a 
mass  of  stuff  which  prevents  the  student  from 
giving  himself  to  the  particular  thing  which 
it  is  his  duty  to  give  his  mind  to,  and  the  re- 
sult is  the  "slump"  described.  Under  such 
circumstances  there  is  absolutely  nothing  to 
be  done  but  to  build  up  the  interest  anew  by 
taking-  out  what  is  clogging  the  stream  of  in- 
terest, laboriously  dredging  out  what  is  hin- 
dering the  free  and  inirestrained  current  of 
mental  power  and  attention  and  making  pos- 
sible the  full  use  of  the  powers  of  the  mind. 
There  is  hardly  a  better  way  of  showing 
this  kind  of  thing  in  action  than  to  watch  a 
pupil  or  a  class  "taking  over"  a  year's  work 
or  a  week's  work  or  even  a  daily  lesson.  The 
reason  why  it  is  being  taken  a  second  time  is 


104  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

usually  because  it  was  not  mastered  the  first 
time.  Ikit  what  is  the  result?  The  student, 
instead  of  being  shown  what  has  happened, 
listlessly  goes  over  the  thing  which  he  thinks 
he  has  already  done  and  gets  no  farther  and 
wastes  his  time  another  day  or  week  or  year 
as  the  case  may  be.  In  hundreds  of  cases 
which  have  come  under  my  observation  I  have 
yet  to  find  a  case  where  anything  substantial 
was  gained  by  making  students  "take  over" 
work  which  thej^  supposed  had  once  been  per- 
formed. In  such  cases  it  is  a  time  for  prompt, 
decisive  action.  The  thing  must  be  mastered 
then  and  there  and  left.  In  fact,  my  o^mi 
judgment  is  that  it  would  be  better  to  leave  it 
entirel)^  and  supj^lement  in  other  ways  than 
drum  along  on  the  theory  that  nothing  can  be 
done  till  that  thing  has  been  performed.  But 
this  is  itself  a  result.  Wherever  you  get  this 
experience  it  is  very  likely  that  the  thought  has 
become  confused  and  concentration  has  become 
impossible  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  waste 
things  are  clogging  the  other^^ise  free  action 
of  the  mind. 

It  is  here  that  the  necessity  for  clear  and 
well-defined  instruction  becomes  most  appar- 
ent. Let  an  idea  or  a  fact  or  a  process  come 
originally  before  the  mind  of  a  child,  crisply 
outlined,  decisively  presented  and  effectively 


THE  ELIMINATION  OF  WASTE  105 

illustrated  and  it  rarely  needs  to  be  told 
twice!  The  original  conception  being  clear, 
all  that  remains  is  the  application  of  what  is 
clearly  defined  in  the  mind.  But  you  listen  to 
a  teacher  explaining  the  construction  of  an 
English  sentence  or  a  Latin  one  or  a  Greek 
one,  and  almost  the  first  thing  the  mature 
mind  is  impressed  with  is  the  obscurity  of  the 
explanation.  In  fact,  the  explanation  has 
often  been  more  puzzling  to  me  than  the 
original  sentence  to  be  construed.  I  used  to 
notice  in  the  German  schools  the  great  differ- 
ence in  this  respect  between  them  and  the 
English  schools,  the  former  abounding  in 
striking,  determinative  and  boldly  outlined 
definition,  description  and  assertive  explana- 
tion. The  latter  seemed  to  me  heavy,  in- 
volved and  often  so  stupid  that  I  wondered 
that  children  could  listen  at  all.  Now  it  was 
not  that  the  children  under  this  latter  instruc- 
tion did  not  gain  anything.  The  trouble  was 
far  more  serious.  The  mind  was  being  filled 
with  waste  stuff  and  the  entire  mental  action 
was  being  clogged,  hindered  and  hobbled.  In- 
terest inider  such  circumstances  was  impos- 
sible and  I  saw  little.  Ov  if  interest  was 
aroused,  it  was  of  a  nature  not  complimentary 
to  the  instruction,  as  when  T  saw  a  ynutli  ])ass 
a  paper,  during  one  nP  tlicsc  lic.ivy  disserta- 


106  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

tions  to  which  nobody  listened  and  which  ob- 
viously bored  everybody,  which  paper,  being 
dropped,  was  picked  up  by  me  and  I  read 
with  amusement  the  following  illuminating- 
screed,  "Bet  you  a  quarter  she  don't  know 
what  she  means  herself."  As  a  betting  prop- 
osition it  was  worthless ;  there  could  be  no  tak- 
ers on  a  matter  so  obviously  one-sided. 

Every  ill-defined  idea  and  every  confused  | 
notion  put  into  young  people's  minds  is  sim-  / 
ply   like   dropping   pebbles   into   cog  wheels,  i 
Yet  most  of  our  text-books  are  witnesses  that  • 
this  process  has  been  elevated  into  a  fine  art. ; 
I  have  in  mind  at  this  moment  my  own  diffi- 
culties with  the  so-called  problems  in  algebra. 
I  venture  the  statement  which  thousands  of 
sufferers  with  me  will  echo,  that  many,  if  not 
most,    of   the   problems    in   algebra    are   not 
mathematical  problems  at  all,  but  are  puzzles 
in  the  English  language,  if  such  brutal  stuff 
can  be  called  language.     I  have  proved  again 
and  again  that  once  you  state  the  equation,  the 
student  has  no  difficulty  and  this  is  the  im- 
portant thing.     But  you  muddle  up  things 
for  the  student  till  the  main  question  becomes 
not  one  of  mathematics  but  one  of  English, 
and  it  is  supposed  to  be  fine  discipline  for  a 
young  person  to  find  out  what  under  heaven 


THE  ELIMINATION  OF  WASTE  107 

the  text-book  maker  was  tliinkiiig  about  when 
he  carefully  hid  away  the  elements  of  the 
question  he  sought  to  propound.  One  might 
just  as  well  hide  a  needle  and  a  spool  of  thread 
and  a  tliimble  about  in  a  barn  and  set  a 
little  girl  to  find  them  and  call  it  a  lesson  in 
sewing.  For  sheer  stupidity  and  mental 
brutahty,  these  so-called  problems  are  i)r()b- 
ably  unmatched  in  the  whole  theory  of  educa- 
tion. They  are  the  rock  pile  of  youth, 
struggling  toward  mental  power  and  self-con- 
sciousness. They  might  as  well  be  sent  to 
mental  penal  servitude  at  once  and  be  done 
with  it.  Xobody  will  ever  know  the  anguish 
which  has  been  thus  heaped  upon  helpless 
young  people,  who,  under  any  rational  deal- 
ing with  exactly  the  same  things,  would  have 
had  not  only  interest  but  pleasure  in  perform- 
ing this  work.  I  knew  an  old  lady  who  in" 
her  old  age  and  infirmity  found  recreation  in 
charades,  puzzle  pictures  and  algebra  prob- 
lems. The  classification  was  both  scientific- 
ally and  practically  sound. 

The  w^aste,  inherent  in  such  a  process  of 
communicating  knowledge,  however,  is  hardly 
to  be  compared  with  that  arising  from  the  ac- 
quisition of  useless  and  false  information 
through   the    failure   to   create   and    maintain 


108  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

some  programme  for  the  coordination  of  the 
knowledge  gained.  One  reason  why  the  Bi- 
ble remains  ineontestably  the  best  book  for 
general  culture  and  the  most  useful  text-book 
for  mental  growth  and  maturity,  is  for  just 
the  reason  that  almost  everything  learned 
from  it  means  that  about  fifty  other  things 
are  learned  at  the  same  time.  Knowledge  of  , 
the  English  Bible,  for  example,  means  the  en-^lr^iy^ 
trance  into  English  literature  by  its  widest  --^ 

and  most  interesting  gate.     It  means  the  en-  ij 

trance  into  history  through  its  most  fascinat- 
ing portals.  It  means  the  introduction  to  hu- 
man motives  by  means  of  the  surest  and  most 
exacting  standards.  It  means  immediate, 
interesting  and  fertilizing  touch  with  a  thou- 
sand interests  at  once.  And  all  these  things 
come  together  at  the  time  of  life  when  the 
rudiments  of  criticism  are  being  formed  and 
lay  the  foundations  for  the  best  structural 
organization  of  the  mind.  Take  the  most 
arid  portions  of  the  Old  Testament  and  there 
is  no  waste  in  their  acquisition,  and  now  that 
the  Bible  has  a  place  among  the  books  which 
may  be  offered  among  the  English  require- 
ments for  admission  to  college,  there  is  a  util- 
ity about  it  for  that  purpose  also.  There  is 
no  waste  in  any  of  this  material.  Hence  the 
Bible  remains  the  most  fruitful  book  for  the 


THE  ELIMINATION  OF  WASTE  109 

purpose  of  training  cliildren  and  youth,  and, 
properly  done,  does  other  things  of  even  more 
importance  than  tliose  indicated. 

But  simihir  results  may  be  secured  in  the 
intelligent  choice  of  other  materials.  There 
is  a  choice,  is  there  not,  in  giving  a  child  a  toy 
which  excites  not  the  slightest  effort  or  one 
that  causes  inquiry  into  what  makes  it  go? 
Tliere  is  a  choice,  is  there  not,  in  the  kind  of 
activities  to  which  a  child  is  directed?  The 
perpetually  recurring  question  of  young  chil- 
dren is,  "Wliat  shall  I  do?"  That  is  the  op- 
portunity of  the  parent  and  the  choice  there 
may  be  of  a  character  which  will  fill  with  se- 
lected, intensively  productive  matter  the  in- 
quiring young  mind.  What  most  people  do, 
is  to  throw  anything  that  comes  handy  to  the 
child  and  get  rid  of  thinking  about  it.  But 
this  question,  while  not  vocalized,  in  exactly 
the  same  way  goes  on  through  tlie  earlier 
years  of  life.  Boys  and  girls  while  not  ask- 
ing the  question,  may  be  led,  directed  and  en- 
riched some  of  the  time  without  their  knowing 
it.  And  all  the  time  their  standards  of  taste 
may  be  raised,  their  interests  widened,  tlieir 
abilities  for  clioice  made  stronger  and  their 
selective  habits  clarified  all  along  the  line. 
The  degree  to  which  this  is  carefully  done,  is 
also  the  degree  to  which  waste  materials  arc 


110  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

kept  out   of  the   child's  life  and  mind  and 
worth-while  things  substituted. 

In  the  country  village  where  I  am  writing 
this,  there  is  a  man  who  for  years  has  done 
here  what  every  parent  and  teacher  should  do. 
This  genial  lover  of  his  kind,  until  infirmity 
prevented  him  from  continuing  his  practice, 
used  to  go  to  the  village  library,  when  it  was 
opened  for  the  drawing  of  books  on  Satur- 
day afternoon,  and  lounge  around  the  place 
watching  the  boys  and  girls  as  they  came  to 
draw  books.  Friendly  with  them  always,  he 
used  to  note  their  perplexity,  and'  answer  be- 
fore it  was  uttered  the  question,  "What  shall 
I  get?"  by  a  suggestion  here  and  a"  bit  of  in- 
formation there,  and  by  easy  stages  he  got  the 
young  people  to  read  desirable  things  and  has 
for  years  done  a  most  valuable  work  of  which 
the  young  people  who  gi'ew  up  under  that 
practice  are  at  this  moment  not  even  aware. 
One  result  is  that  more  young  people  in  this 
village  take  higher  education  than  is  probably 
the  case  in  any  village  of  its  size  for  miles 
around.  This  man  was  simply  preventing 
mental  waste.  Left  to  themselves  the  young 
people  would  have  filled  their  minds  with  fic- 
tion simply,  and  probably  not  the  best  of  that. 
As  it  was  they  got  biography,  travel,  history. 


THE  ELIMINATION  OF  WASTE  111 

natural  science  and  politics.  That  is  exactly 
the  plan  which  ought  to  be  inaugurated  in 
every  household  in  the  land.  The  collateral 
result  which  this  has  on  scholarship  is  one  of 
the  tilings  which  should  not  be  overlooked 
either.  The  cheap  and  useless  stuff,  tons  of 
which  are  printed  every  year  as  "children's 
books,"  is  not  only  worthless  as  fertilizing 
matter,  but  it  is  full  of  misinformation.  I 
lately  looked  over  such  a  book,  which  was  well 
printed  and  of  a  make-up  which  will  insure  its 
purchase  by  thousands  of  well-to-do  people, 
in  the  interest  of  the  mental  life  of  their  chil- 
dren. It  happened  to  deal  with  a  portion  of 
the  country  with  which  I  am  well  acquainted. 
Simply  in  glancing  through  this  book,  I 
counted  thirty-one  errors  of  fact.  I  know 
plenty  of  books  on  the  same  subject  far  more 
interesting  and  full  of  solid  historical  mate- 
rial which  an  intelhgent  choice  would  have 
substituted  for  this  volume.  The  children 
who  read  this  book,  supposing  they  are  deal- 
ing with  actual  history,  will  find  their  mental 
furnaces  choked  with  slag  and  be  perpetually 
bothered  to  find  out  that  what  they  Iiave  been 
accepting  as  fact  is  in  reality  falsehood.  A 
riglit  choice  at  that  time  would  have  given  the 
mental    furnace    selected,    hand-picked    coal 


112  THE  SCHOOL  IX  THE  HOME 

from  a  scholar's  mind  and  generated  in  the 
mental  machinery  substantial  power  for  years 
to  come. 

Prompt  substitution  of  advanced  material 
for  material  thoroughly  digested  and  under- 
stood is  another  element  in  the  successful  elim- 
ination of  waste.  When  do  we  discard  one 
size  of  shoes  for  a  child  and  get  a  larger  size? 
When  the  shoes  are  outgro\\Ti  of  course.  But 
I  have  seen  children  wearing  the  baby  shoes 
of  their  minds  long  after  they  had  outgrown 
them.  It  is  a  pleasant  sensation  to  dwell 
ui:)on  what  one  knows  thoroughly  and  as 
thoroughly  Hkes.  Children  in  this  respect 
are  not  unlike  adults  who  love  to  read  and  re- 
read their  favorite  authors.  Xow  if  the  au- 
thor is  worth  reading  more  than  once,  that  is 
one  thing.  But  this  is  rarely  the  case  with 
children's  books,  and  when  a  child  persistently 
is  found  reading  the  same  thing  over  and  over 
again,  it  simply  indicates  that  the  absence  of 
mental  effort  involved  in  that  process  is 
breeding  laziness  and  that  the  mind  is  stag- 
nating. Then  promptly  something  more 
stimulating  and  more  exacting  should  be  sub- 
stituted. Here  again  the  Bible  is  an  excep- 
tion, because  almost  every  text  in  the  Bible  has 
been  conmiented  upon  so  extensively  that  con- 
stant   contact    provokes    increasing    reflection 


THE  ELIMINATION  OF  WASTE  113 

and  inquiry,  which  is  of  course  the  end  of  all 
mental  effort.  But  there  should  be  a  con- 
stant and  steady  taking  out  and  fresh  putting 
in  of  materials  which  call  for  exertion  and  at- 
tention so  that  these  faculties  of  exertion  and 
attention  may  be  kept  up  to  their  full  possi- 
bilities. 

One  reason  why  the  excessive  reading  of 
certain  kinds  of  newspapers  is  mentally  so 
very  damaging  to  all  people,  young  or  old,  is 
that  it  dissipates  the  mental  powers,  causes 
the  mind  to  dwell  indiscriminately  upon  im- 
portant and  unimportant  tilings  and  destroys 
the  sense  of  proportion.  The  critical  facul- 
ties are  thus  dulled  and  finally  lost.  One  gets 
of  course  a  "nose  for  news,"  but  few  peoj)le 
who  have  any  important  business  on  hand,  ex- 
cept in  professions  where  "a  nose  for  news" 
is  a  necessary  tool  for  efficiency,  have  any  use 
for  this  kind  of  a  "nose."  But  the  thing  can 
be  done  with  books  as  succcssi'ully  as  with 
newspapers.  The  ability  to  think  consecu- 
tively and  the  power  of  sustained  thou gl it  in 
any  given  direction  can  be  lost  (juite  as  surely 
in  a  library  as  in  a  newspaper  reading  room. 
When  people  say  wliat  one  often  hears,  "I 
never  could  remember  which  was  wliich"  <>r 
"I  never  was  good  at  tliat  sort  of  thing,"  aiul 
such-like  expressions,   they   merely   mean   that 


114  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

at  the  time  when  these  things  ought  to  have 
been  given  to  them  clearly,  definitely  and  with 
clarified  assertiveness,  the  stream  of  thought 
was  muddy  with  other  things  and  they  simply 
got  tangled  up*  with  a  miscellaneous  lot  of 
other  information,  true,  false  and  mixed. 
These  persons  have  lost  even  the  power  of  say- 
ing frankly  what  is  the  simple  truth,  "I  do  not 
know."  This  confusion  arises  from  the  hab- 
its which  have  been  described  above  and  from 
the  want  of  a  clarified,  prepared  mind  to  re- 
ceive what  is  offered. 

The  art  of  making  everything  tell  toward 
a  given  result  is  another  of  the  things  to  be 
noted  in  keeping  the  mind  filled  with  fertile 
instead  of  wasteful  matter.  There  is  scarcely 
a  subject  which  does  not  in  the  hands  of  a 
mature  person,  who  is  interested  in  the  work, 
admit  of  endless  development  illustratively 
and  otherwise.  Now  the  more  things  you 
link  with  anj'-  important  fact,  the  more  you 
convince,  first,  of  its  importance,  and,  second, 
the  more  surely  you  give  it  its  fixed  place  in 
the  mental  furniture.  In  dealing  with  young 
people,  my  habit  has  always  been  to  tell  every- 
thing I  knew  about  the  topic  under  discussion. 
If  I  knew  little,  I  made  it  my  business  to  find 
out  more.  But  the  outstanding  impression  I 
always  sought  to  leave,  was  that  the  thing  had 


THE  ELIMINATION  OF  WASTE  115 

infinite  possibilities  and  that  there  was  a  great 
deal  about  it  to  be  learned  which  was  as  inter- 
esting or  even  more  interesting  than  that 
which  I  had  already  communicated.  That  is 
exactly  what  an  advertisement  seeks  to  do — 
to  j^ersuade  you  to  investigate  and  finally  buy 
the  goods  advertised.  That  is  just  what  the 
publisher's  prospectus  does  about  the  book  he 
wants  you  to  buy.  As  a  teacher,  I  advertise 
the  wares  I  have  to  offer.  I  am  not  above 
making  my  subject  as  interesting  as  I  can  and 
showing  that  there  is  going  to  be  a  great  losj 
to  my  students  if  they  don't  take  what  I  offer\ 
them.  The  lure  of  knowledge  is  the  most 
fascinating  game  in  the  world.  The  child 
mind,  eager,  ready  and  anxious  to  be  filled,, 
follows  any  leader  who  has  the  capacity  to 
lead.  The  deplorable  fact  is  that  this  is  a 
period  when  we  give  the  children  lies  of  all 
kinds — lies  about  religion,  lies  about  social 
facts,  lies  about  the  family,  lies  about  life  and 
lies  about  everything  that  has  im])(n'tance  and 
relation  to  sane  and  sound  living  later  on.  Of 
course  the  people  who  do  all  this  do  not  call 
them  lies.  They  invent  otlier  fictitious  terms 
but  the  simple  fact  remains  that  falsclioods 
are  substituted  for  the  truth,  l^y  and  by  tlie 
falsehoods  are  discovered  to  be  such  and  then 
comes  the  tragedy  of  the  dropping  out  of  the 


116  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

moral  underpinning,  the  loss  of  confidence  in 
those  who  should  command  it  most.  But  the 
truth  is  not  less  interesting  than  the  substitutes 
for  it,  interesting  as  some  of  these  are.  Cer- 
tainly if  the  same  skill  were  expended  in  tell- 
ing true  and  great  things  that  is  now  wasted  in 
things  worthless  and  false,  the  result  would  be 
astounding. 

Reference  must  be  made  again  here  to  the 
Bible  because  it  illustrates  the  point  bettei 
than  any  other  book.  Your  child  wants  a 
story.  A  very  little  study  will  embellish 
with  side  lights  and  historical  illustration  al- 
most any  part  of  the  Biblical  narrative,  and 
you  have  the  best  mind  stuff  imaginable.  For 
older  boys  and  girls,  the  interpretive  word  as 
a  mature  person  is  able  to  give  it  will  acclima- 
tize in  the  mind  of  very  young  j^eople  the  clas- 
sic authors  and  give  them  a  permanent  place 
in  the  intellectual  affections.  Anybody  can 
prove  this  by  simply  trying  it.  And  by  so 
much  as  this  progranmie  succeeds,  waste  is 
cast  out  and  the  ground  firmly  and  fruitfully 
occupied. 

This  process  has  one  further  and  interest- 
ing result.  Parents  who  employ  it  will  find 
themselves  growing  skillful  in  anticipating 
possible  error  and  preventing  misconceptionj^ 
developing,  and  will  find  themselves  organiz- 


THE  ELIMINATION  OF  WASTE  117 

ing  their  own  knowledge  in  a  way,  which, 
without  this  plan,  they  are  hardly  likely  to  do. 
The  path  of  knowledge,  like  the  path  of  the 
just,  shineth  more  and  more  unto  the  perfect 
day.  Soon  there  develops  between  parent 
and  child  a  mutuality  of  understanding,  an 
aptitude  of  appreciation  and  apprehension  of 
meaning,  and  out  of  this  arises  a  dialectic 
which  is  one  of  the  best  results  of  the  entire 
programme.  Steadily  there  begin  to  recur 
the  little  tests  of  skill,  trials  of  power  and 
comparisons  of  judgment,  by  reason  of  the 
fact  that  the  child's  mind  becomes  aware  of 
itself,  in  contrast  to  the  mature  mind,  and  at 
the  same  time  begins  to  take  the  measure  of 
the  mind  which  is  guiding  and  controlling  it. 
,'^'  It  may  not  be  with  some  parents  an  uninter- 
/^i  esting  collateral  result,  that  they  are  taught 
^  quite  as  much  as  tlie  cliild.  But  in  any  case, 
the  worthy  occupation  of  the  mind  is  acliieved 
and  that  of  itself  makes  certain  noxious  forms 
of  mental  development  impossible. 


The  greatest  reverence  is  due  to  a  child!  If  you 
are  contemplating  a  disgraceful  act,  despise  not  your 
child's  tender  years,  but  let  your  infant  son  act  as  a 
check  upon  your  purpose  of  sinning.  For,  if  at 
some  future  time  he  shall  have  done  anything  to  de- 
serve the  censor's  wrath  and  show  himself  like  you 
not  in  person  only  and  face  but  also  the  true  son  of 
your  morals  and  one  who  by  following  in  your  foot- 
steps adds  deeper  guilt  to  your  crimes,  then  for- 
sooth !  you  will  reprove  and  chastise  him  with  clamor- 
ous bitterness  and  then  set  about  altering  your  will. 
Yet  how  dare  you  assume  the  front  severe  and  license 
of  a  parent's  speech,  you  who  yourself  though  old  do 
worse  than  this,  and  the  exhausted  cupping  glass  is 
long  ago  looking  out  for  your  brainless  head? 

— Juvenal  on  Discipline  by  Parents. 


VI 
HARNESSING  THE  IMAGINATION 

In  undertaking  to  talk  about  the  imagina- 
tion one  must  always  be  cautious,  yet  some 
things  seem  to  be  pretty  well  established  now 
by  psychological  science  which  it  is  worth 
while  to  consider  in  the  very  practical  and  in- 
teresting business  of  rearing  children.  Im-  . 
agination  in  children  is  one  of  the  most  pow-'fA 
erful  influences  moving  them,  and  to  leave  so 
powerful  an  instrument  entirely  without  reg- 
ulation, use  and  utilization  seems  like  a  great 
waste  and,  in  fact,  it  is  an  absolutely  unpar- 
donable waste.  Professor  James  in  his  great 
work  on  psj'chology  quotes  Galton  as  saying, 
after  finding  that  most  "men  of  science"  pro- 
tested that  mental  imagery  was  unknown  to 
them,  the  following,  "On  the  otlier  hand,  when 
I  spoke  to  persons  whom  I  met  in  general  so- 
ciety I  found  an  entirely  different  disposition 
to  prevail.  Many  men  and  yet  a  larger  num- 
ber of  women  and  manif  I)o//s  and  ^irls  de- 
clared that  they  habitually  saw  mental 
imagery  and  that  it  was  perfectly  distinct  to 
them  and  full  of  color."     This  led  to  investi- 

iiy 


120  THE  SCHOOL  IX  THE  HOME 

gations  which  proved  the  truth  of  a  declaration 
made  by  boys  and  girls  absolutely  without  sci- 
entific training  or  interests  and  established,  by 
this  means,  a  most  important  element  to  be 
kept  in  mind  in  the  rearing  and  mental  training 
of  young  children,  of  which  comparatively  lit- 
tle use  is  made  for  the  higher  intellectual  life. 
JNIoreover,  this  imaginative  power  is  not  at  all 
connected  with  vision.  Again  he  says,  "In- 
telligent children  take  pleasure  in  introspection 
and  strive  their  very  best  to  explain  their  men- 
tal processes.  I  think  the  delight  in  self -dis- 
section must  be  a  strong  ingredient  in  the 
pleasure  that  many  are  said  to  take  in  con- 
fessing to  priests." 

So  much  for  the  science  of  the  thing.  On 
the  practical  side  the  facts  are  verj^  clear  and 
easily  verifiable  in  any  household  where  there 
are  "intelligent"  children,  which  does  not  mean 
exceptional  children  or  children  highly  gifted 
in  one  way  or  another,  but  children  who  are 
well  and  able  to  take  the  ordinary  child's  part 
in  household  life.  The  imaginative  life  of  a 
child  is  usuallj^  regarded  by  parents  and  ma- 
ture people  merely  as  a  pleasant  source  of 
amusement  and  not  as  a  tool  for  the  child's 
future  development.  And  not  a  few  persons 
to  whom  one  mentions  the  idea  of  utilizing  the 
imagination  are  repelled  by  the  thought  as  in 


HARNESSING  THE  IMAGINATION       121 

some  way  robbing  the  child  of  sometliing  pe- 
cuharl)'  pleasurable  and  which  is  the  child's 
very  own  and,  therefore,  not  to  be  interfered 
with.  To  "harness"  the  imagination,  there- 
fore, will  very  naturally  strike  many  persons 
who  read  this  book  as  an  unpleasant  bit  of 
utilitarianism.  It  springs  from  exactly  the 
same  feeling  which  persists  in  letting  children 
misuse  words  because  they  are  "cunning"  and 
indulge  in  baby  talk  because  it  is  "cute."  Of 
course  the  difficulties  which  are  thus  inte- 
grated into  the  child's  mental  fixtures  to  make 
trouble  in  the  future  are  not  considered.  lUit 
then  serious  consideration  for  children's  intel- 
lectual growth  is  one  of  the  things  ^Vmerican 
parents  have  yet  to  learn. 

In  a  certain  nursery  with  which  I  am  very 
well  acquainted  there  are  upward  of  thirty 
dolls  of  all  sizes  and  descriptions.  Probably 
the  whole  collection  with  the  single  exception 
of  a  large  French  doll,  a  gift  to  the  children 
of  this  nursery,  could  be  replaced  for  less  than 
two  dollars.  But  tlie  value  of  that  collection 
of  dolls  to  the  intellectual  life  and  training  of 
the  children  mIio  have  and  still  use  tlicm  can 
hardly  be  overestimated.  Their  names  will 
prove  their  peculiar  relation  to  the  intellectual 
interest  alluded  to,  comprising,  as  they  do, 
Cleopatra,  Julius  Ca-sar,  Mark  Ilanna,  King 


122  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

Edward  and  Queen  Alexandra,  Lucy  and 
]\Iary  (standing  in  this  case  for  I^usitania 
and  IMauretania,  the  great  steamshij^s),  Jupi- 
ter, Cupid,  John  Harvard  and  a  great  many 
others.  Here  is  certainly  a  very  diversified 
company  and  they  all  stand  for  something  in 
particular.  Now,  names  have  figured  very 
largely  in  the  history  of  all  the  gi-eat  human 
interests.  Religion,  for  example,  especially 
among  primitive  races  and  the  earlier  nations, 
can  be  worked  out  almost  entirely  from  the  use 
of  divine  names.  Names  usually  connote  a 
events  and  principles  and  standards  of  con- 
duct or  relations  of  one  kind  and  another,  all 
of  which  are  the  raw  materials  of  thought  and 
springs  of  action.  Every  one  of  the  names 
in  the  above  list  is  distinctly  connected 
with  the  set  of  ideas  which  the  chil- 
dren who  own  these  dolls  had  gained  and 
which  they  thought  worth  while  to  give 
permanent  form.  The  external  representa- 
tions were  made  in  accord  with  these  ideas, 
but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  this  group 
there  was  gathered  a  large  fund  of  knowledge 
which  has  been  useful  in  many  other  ways  al- 
ready and  will  be  useful  in  still  others  yet  to 
appear.  For  example,  the  name  of  Cleopa- 
tra is  distinctly  connected  with  certain  stories 
of  Egypt  which  led  directly  to  the  investiga- 


HARNESSING  THE   IMAGINATION        123 

tion  of  other  stories  about  Egyj^t  and  left  a 
rather  good  outline  of  that  land  and  its  his- 
tory in  the  minds  of  these  children  with  a  va- 
riety of  detail  which  would  not  be  discredit- 
able in  most  mature  people.  I  recall  very 
well  when  Cleopatra  broke  her  head  and  by 
reason  of  the  studies  to  which  her  personality 
had  led,  she  was  "embalmed"  (another  avenue 
of  information  fruitful  in  many  directions) 
in  a  compound  of  olive  oil,  cloves,  cinnamon 
and  other  ingredients  which  I  do  not  now  re- 
call. While  she  was  being  buried,  a  Dart- 
mouth professor  happened  into  the  home  as 
guest  and,  seeing  this  procession  going  on  and 
inquiring  into  the  reasons  for  it,  proceeded  to 
give  a  lecture  on  Egyptian  life  and  habits 
and  customs,  as  he  had  seen  them,  which 
has  crystalhzed  permanently  a  mass  of  addi- 
tional information  about  Egypt  in  the  minds 
of  all  the  children.  "^Mark  Ilanna"  was  rather 
fully  discussed  one  day  at  the  dinner  table  in 
connection  with  an  exciting  political  cam- 
paign in  which  he  figured.  His  political 
generalship,  his  astuteness  and  his  general 
representative  character  made  a  sufficient  im- 
pression to  cause  a  new  little  doll  to  be  named 
for  him.  15ut  tlie  dnll  lias  also  permanently 
embodied  in  the  minds  of  tlie  children  tlie  com- 
l)lete    history    of   a    ])olitical    campaign    with 


124  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

numerous  incidents  of  American  public  life, 
questions  of  public  morality  wbich  have  al- 
ready bad  and  must  have  an  increasing  influ- 
ence on  tbeir  thougbt  about  these  things  as 
they  become  more  experienced  and  mature. 
"John  Harvard"  came  so  early  and  has  had  so 
great  an  influence  that  the  question  of  college 
education  and  preparation  for  it  has  never 
been  discussed  by  these  children  except  as  to 
the  probable  date  of  entrance.  "Lucy"  and 
"Mary"  were  born  out  of  an  extensive  discus- 
sion of  ocean  travel,  of  the  rise,  development 
and  expansion  of  steamship  transportation 
and  probably  brought  into  the  minds  of  the 
children  all  they  were  able  to  contain  about 
that  subject.  They  are  the  visible  symbols  of 
a  distinctly  understood  scientific  enterprise. 

Now  that  is  what  I  call  harnessing  the  im- 
agination. In  this  case  it  happened  to  be 
dolls.  But  it  happened  also  with  kittens  who 
bore  the  names  resjjectively  of  Siegfried, 
Tigris-Euphrates  and  Peter!  It  is  a  per- 
fectly safe  statement  that  from  the  doll, 
"Helen  of  Troy,"  these  children  at  a  very  early 
age  got  a  full,  complete  and  accurate  account 
of  the  "Iliad"  and  a  large  section  of  Greek 
history.  "Scipio  Africanus"  in  the  shape  of 
a  particularly  handsome  cat  more  than  justi- 
fied his  existence  by  the  increment  which  he 


HARNESSING  THE  IMAGINATION       125 

brought  to  the  children's  knowledge.  I  have 
known  a  pet  frog  to  embody  in  his  title,  which 
for  obvious  reasons  I  cannot  give,  the  per- 
sonality and  outstanding  characteristics  of  a 
well-knoMTi  town  character.  TsTow  all  this 
was  using  the  imagination  so  to  speak,  for  all 
it  was  worth.  It  gave  practical  things  to 
play  with,  and  it  also  stirred  the  mind  and 
stored  the  memory  with  things  which  were  in- 
tellectually fertilizing  and  distinctly  valuable. 
All  that  it  required  was  somebody  at  hand  to 
furnish  the  material  and  the  children  did  the?^ 
rest.  The  imagination  was  made  a  distinct 
adjunct  to  knowledge-getting  and  with  this 
knowledge  were  laid  the  foundations  for  ca- 
pacity and  power  of  comparison  in  a  great 
many  ways.  I  should  like  to  know  whether 
this  was  not  quite  as  childlike  and  whether  it 
was  not  infinitely  more  valuable  than  the 
Jessies,  Fannies  and  Bessies  and  what  not, 
with  absolutely  no  accompanying  story?  To 
be  sure,  these  children  had  their  "Maries"  and 
their  "Lillians"  who  were  simply  creations 
with  no  history.  But  it  remains  true  that  the 
historical  characters  have  been  the  abiding 
ones  and  they  are  the  ones  which  have  enriched 
the  storehouse  of  memory  and  knowledge. 
They  also  have  lieen  the  ones  which  liave  fur- 
nished the  greatest  pleasure.     This  linking  of 


126  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

the  imiaginatlve  life  with  the  sources  of  knowl- 
edge is  one  of  the  most  fruitful  fields  in  the 
intensive  training  of  children. 

As  Galton  says,  children  love  to  recall  and 
recount  the  stories  with  which  the  experiences 
which  come  to  them  are  connected.  And  if 
these  stories  are  allied  to  something  of  intrin- 
sic worth  and  interest  the  gain  is  just  so  much 
greater.  But  I  know  of  very  little  use  be- 
ing made  of  this  vast  power  which  is  pecul- 
iarly strong  in  children  and  which  is  also  in 
children  exceptionally  active.  History  be- 
gun in  this  way  will  be  a  perennial  source  of 
delight  as  long  as  the  brain  works.  The  field 
for  mental  enrichment  and  expansion  is  by 
this  tool  made  almost  unlimited.  And  it  can 
readily  be  seen  what  an  advantage  is  gained 
by  a  child  so  trained.  Names  connected  with 
stories  learned  in  childhood  and  stored  in  the 
memory  take  away  the  strangeness  of  these 
things  when  encountered  later  on,  and  not 
only  so,  but  are  met  as  old  friends  with  whom 
a  pleasant  relationship  is  resumed.  They 
start  streams  of  tliought  in  many  directions. 
They  open  countless  conjectures  about  men, 
manners  and  habits  of  life.  They  make,  al- 
most without  eff'ort,  schemes  of  life  and 
contrasts  of  appearance,  behavior  and  ideals 
of  achievement,  which  become  principles  of 


HARNESSING  THE  IMAGINATION       127 

action  and  almost  determine  the  intellectual 
interests  of  later  life.  Children  so  trained 
are  immune  to  the  cheap  and  \'Tilgar  appeals 
to  their  imaginative  life,  and  the  ordinary 
"comic"  has  nothing  for  them  except  a  mo- 
ment's idle  examination  for  the  idea,  which, 
usually  absent,  leaves  only  disgust  for  the  bar- 
renness of  so  much  effort  expended  without 
result.  From  what  I  saw  thus  developed  in 
my  own  nursery,  I  turned  to  others,  and  have 
for  twenty  years  taken  pleasure  in  examining 
what  was  going  on  in  the  nurseries  of  the 
homes  to  which  I  have  had  access.  I  have 
watched  the  life  of  children  and  have  over  and 
over  again  proved  that  children  left  untouched 
and  untrained  in  this  department  of  their  life 
suffer  a  great  loss.  And  I  have  demon- 
strated to  my  OA\Ti  satisfaction,  at  least,  that 
almost  any  child  will  take  up  almost  any  kind 
of  material  and  assimilate  it.  I  have  in 
mind  at  this  very  moment  a  household  which 
rather  prided  itself  upon  the  fact  that  it  was 
"untainted"  with  any  religion.  Romping 
with  its  cliildren  on  one  occasion,  I  told,  in  a 
resting  interval,  the  story  of  David  and 
Goliath  Avithout  mentioning  its  Biblical 
source.  A  few  days  later  coming  up  the 
front  walk  of  that  home  with  the  father 
of    my    young    friends,    many    inches    taller 


128  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

than  I,  we  were  instanth''  hailed  as 
"David  and  Goliath,"  and  I  was  called 
David  by  those  children  ever  after.  That  led 
to  results  in  the  use  of  the  Bible  in  that  home 
which  have  been  nothing  short  of  revolution- 
ary. The  boy  who  was  attracted  by  that 
story  is  now  a  minister  of  the  gospel  and  links 
the  transformation  of  his  life  and  that  of  his 
home  with  the  fact  that  I  caught  his  imagina- 
tion with  a  liistoric  tale,  which,  when  he  grew 
to  appreciate  its  significance,  caused  a  spirit- 
ual revolution.  But  there  is  nothing  spe- 
cially new  in  this.  The  spiritual  revolutions 
of  history  have  generally  found  their  sources 
in  the  stories  which,  heard  in  childhood,  have 
roused  the  imagination  and  become  crj^stallized 
into  principles  of  action.  \  A  distinguished 
American  who  has  made  a  national  reputation 
as  a  criminal  prosecutor  told  me  that,  when  a 
famous  railroad  wrecker  had  caused  the  loss 
of  his  father's  fortune,  the  effort  of  his 
mother  to  explain  their  change  of  life  by  tell- 
ing the  story  not  of  the  family  wrongs  but  of 
the  injustice  of  such  proceedings,  maldng  ab- 
stract for  her  small  boy  what  they  were  ex- 
periencing in  the  concrete,  set  his  imagina- 
tion on  fire  to  be  a  sword  of  vengeance  against 
evil  doers  of  this  kind.  He  never  got  away 
from     that     early    impression.     To-day     his 


HARNESSING  THE  IMAGINATION        129 

name  is  a  terror  to  certain  great  interests 
which  are  unjustly  employing  their  privileges 
and  power  to  the  people's  disadvantage. 
Again  and  again  he  has  been  approached  to 
give  his  brilliant  rnind  to  the  legal  defense 
of  some  of  these  interests.  But  when  the 
temptation  has  come,  he  has  heard  that  primi- 
tive imaginative  note  of  righteous  indignation 
and  he  remains  the  unpurchasable  advo- 
cate of  righteousness  and  justice.  Tlie  his- 
tory of  the  courts  in  this  land  has  literally 
been  changed  by  that  swaying  of  the  imagina- 
tion of  a  child.  The  country  has  not  a  few 
2:)ersons  who  are  figuring  large  in  its  institu- 
tional life  who  have  derived  their  inspiration 
and  bent  in  the  same  way.  Their  imaginative 
life  was  early  harnessed  to  definite  human 
conceptions  and  made  not  only  their  own  his- 
tory but  in  no  inconsiderable  degree  tlie  life 
and  history  of  their  fellow-men. 

My  small  boys  very  early  manifested  what 
is  quite  common  in  small  boys,  the  love  of 
arms  and  armor  and  weapons  and  combat. 
By  a  little  direction  their  sliields  became  or- 
namented witli  crosses  and  tlicir  battles  be- 
came crusades  and  their  exercise  in  this  way 
transformed  into  an  instrument  of  historic 
and  ethical  culture.  This  was  long  before 
the  idea  had  been  embodied  in  an  organiza- 


180  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

tion  for  boys  which  now  does  this  thing  in 
connection  with  church  work  for  boys.  My 
own  impression  is  that  to  organize  this  idea 
in  that  way  would  tend  to  destroy  its  useful- 
ness, but,  in  any  case,  others  have  seen  its  util- 
ity for  moral  and  spiritual  cultivation.  What 
I  am  seeking  to  lay  down  here,  is  the  principle 
that  the  imagination  needs  and  should  receive 
at  a  very  early  stage,  direction,  and  the  mea-  ^ 
ger  equipment  of  the  child  supplemented  and 
furnished,  where  the  need  exists,  with  a  body 
and  a  content.  All  such  additions  to  the  ma- 
terials for  imaginative  reflection  are  sheer 
gain.  It  is  literally  getting  something  for 
nothing,  for  it  creates  something  where  noth- 
ing was  before  and  gives  the  little  mind  some- 
thing to  work  on  and  toward,  wliich  is  usually 
just  what  the  young  mind  wants.  I  venture 
to  say  that  with  all  the  increase  in  children's 
books  and  the  forms  of  child  teaching  and 
guidance  and  with  the  enormous  awakening 
of  the  formative  importance  of  childhood,  j^et 
there  is  no  subject  to  which  so  little  attention  j 
is  given  by  the  responsible  persons  as  to  this  ( 
matter  of  directing  and  controlling  what  goes  11 
into  the  minds  of  children  and  what  happens 
to  it,  when  it  is  there.  It  is  imjjortant  to  see 
to  it  that  a  child  gets  food.  But  its  digestion 
must  also  be  watched.     Exactly  the  same  rule 


HARNESSING  THE  IMAGINATION       131 

applies  to  the  mind.  We  must  not  merely  see 
to  it  that  the  right  things  are  brought  before  ^ 
it.  We  must  direct  and  assist  in  its  assimi-  ' 
lation  and  see  that  every  need  is  supplied  and 
that  the  processes  of  growth,  and  with  this 
the  formative  ideas  and  ideals,  are  carefully 
directed,  sometimes  stimulated,  sometimes  re- 
strained, but  in  every  case  directed. 

Training  and  directing  a  child's  imagina- 
tion has  another  aspect  which  is  of  importance 
in  its  mental  development.  Habits  of  atten- 
tion and  concentration  are,  broadly  speaking, 
the  surest  tests  of  the  real  strength  or  weak- 
ness of  the  mind.  Now,  habits  of  attention 
are  developed  by  interest,  of  which  something 
more  will  be  said  later  on.  But  attention  will 
be  held  when  the  inward  interest,  called  im- 
agination, most  strongly  allies  itself  with  the 
outward  process  of  creating  interest.  The 
objective  of  creating  the  habit  of  attention  is 
the  important  thing.  It  almost  always  may 
be  secured  when  the  imaginative  elements  are 
properly  directed  and  controlled.  And  thus 
very  early  is  begun  the  concentration  of  mind 
which  is  so  necessary  a  feature  of  soinid  men- 
tality. The  right  use  of  the  imagination  in-\ 
stead  of  being  a  hindrance  to  concentration 
is  actually  the  best  means  of  securing  it.  This 
is  the  case  because  the  interest  is  spontaneous, 


132  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

because  it  is  not  projected  upon  the  child 
from  without,  has  its  rise  not  from  something 
outside  of  itself  but  something-  within  craving 
utterance  and  expression.  What  concerns 
the  child  itself  will  always  receive  some  kind 
of  attention  and  what  concerns  itself,  linked 
with  some  other  allied  interest,  secures  the 
same  kind  and  degree  of  attention  and  concen- 
tration for  that  allied  interest  that  it  gives  to 
itself.  Every  time  you  link  some  bit  of  per- 
manent knowledge,  some  fragment  of  litera- 
ture, some  incident  of  historj^  some  discovery 
of  science,  with  some  distinct  imaginative  in- 
terest of  the  cliild,  you  have  planted  a  seed 
which  is  sure  to  be  fruitful  in  many  w^ays. 
This  is  why  the  songs  which  mothers  sing  to 
their  children  exercise  such  a  tremendous 
after-influence  in  the  hves  of  children  who 
have  been  thus  favored.  They  hear  the  song, 
often  they  learn  a  story;  they  link  that  story 
with  the  sweetest  and  dearest  affection  of  the 
heart  and  thus  soldiers  and  poets,  heroes  and 
scoundrels,  are  created  in  the  very  arms  of  the 
mothers!  A  friend  of  mine  told  me  that  he 
believed  certain  moral  derelictions  had  been 
denuded  of  their  moral  hideousness  because 
in  early  boyhood  he  had  heard  them  treated 
lightly  in  a  drinking  song  which  he  had  heard 
his  father  sing. 


HARNESSING  THE  IMAGINATION        133 

If  the  harnessed  iiii agination  is  an  instru- 
ment of  power,  the  unharnessed  imagination 
is  even  seven  times  more  destructive  as  a 
power  making  for  mental  disintegration  and 
discursiveness.  The  danger  of  letting  the 
imagination  wander  without  direction  and 
control  was  very  early  perceived  hy  church- 
men who  have  left  a  very  large  body  of  liter- 
ature on  the  subject.  They  were  tliinking,  of 
course,  only  on  the  subject  of  the  moral  and 
spiritual  results  of  letting  the  mind  dwell 
fondly  on  unlawful  pleasures  and  indul- 
gences. But  the  lawlessness  of  action,  bred 
by  wanton  indulgence  of  the  imagination  in 
matters  moral,  is  more  than  matched  by  the 
anarchy  bred  in  the  mind  by  permitting  ideas 
to  flit  into  and  about  the  mind  without  context 
and  without  purpose.  When  a  man  indulges 
in  day-dreams  and  finds  himself  unable  to  fix 
his  mind  upon  tlie  things  he  is  set  to  do,  it 
simply  indicates  that  he  has  not  the  will  power 
to  control  his  imagination  on  the  one  hand  or 
a  misdirected  imagination  on  the  other.  Per- 
haps the  two  things  are  not  very  different. 
But  this  process  may  be  seen  in  its  beginnings 
at  an  early  age.  It  is  seen  in  commands  by 
parents  whicli  are  unlieeded,  ])y  instructions 
whicli  are  forgotten,  ])y  negligence  in  a  thou- 
sand   different    directions    where    tlie    uncon- 


184  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

trolled  imagination  has  run  away  with  the  ac- 
tuality. The  habit  of  lying  by  cliildren  often 
is  exactly  this  and  nothing  more.  An  un- 
harnessed imagination  is  the  best  soil  possible 
for  every  kind  of  moral  delinquency,  but  it  is 
also  the  effective  agent  of  mental  inefficiency. 
This  arises  from  the  fact  that  unless  connected 
with  verifiable  things,  hnked  to  matters  which 
have  distinct  relation  to  life  and  actuality, 
with  the  remaining  acti^aties  of  the  mind,  the 
sense  of  accuracy  and  veracity  is  impaired  or 
destroyed.  Nearly  everyone  knows  what  it  is 
to  think  about  a  thing  so  long  and  so  long- 
ingly that  it  comes  to  be  regarded  as  real. 
The  number  of  persons  who  thus  deceive 
themselves  about  themselves,  the  world  and 
the  things  around  them  is  legion.  There  is 
probably  not  one  man  in  a  thousand  who  has 
made  a  failure  in  life  but  the  almost  direct  rea- 
son for  which  was  that  he  had  been  living  in 
an  imaginative  world  of  falsehoods  concern- 
ing himself  and  his  capabilities  instead  of  a 
world  of  realities  brightened  and  directed  by 
a  controlled  imagination.  Naturally  what  can 
cast  so  strong  a  glow  over  life  as  an  aroused 
imagination  has  the  same  power  for  doing  evil 
that  it  has  for  doing  good. 

Here  again  I  have  a  striking  illustration  in 
mind.     A  youth  who  was  a  contemporary  of 


HARNESSING  THE  IMAGINATION       135 

mine  in  boyhood  and  wlio  was  skill I'ul  with 
pen  and  pencil  was  very  early  led  to  imagine 
himself  "destined"  to  become  a  great  artist. 
Foolish  parents  and  unfaithful  friends  per- 
mitted this  imaginative  "destiny"  to  grow  into 
a  fixed  belief  without  being  scrutinized  and 
brought  under  the  control  of  severe  training 
and  exacting  tests  by  competent  and  disinter- 
ested persons.  The  result  has  been  a  pathetic 
figure  in  life.  And  the  worst  feature  of  it  is 
that,  in  the  opinion  of  persons  who  are  qual- 
ified to  know,  if  this  young  boy  had  })een 
trained  for  draftsmanship,  he  might  have  be- 
come not  merely  a  useful  and  successful  man, 
but  might  also  have  attained  what  he  im- 
agined he  was  destined  to  be  by  nature.  He 
has  missed  his  ideal  and  he  has  missed  usefid- 
ness  both.  I  take  it  that  this  w^as  due  almost 
entirely  to  the  fact  that  he  was  permitted 
to  indulge  his  imagination  without  control. 
There  are  thousands  of  music  students  mIio 
flock  to  the  great  cities  annually  with  the  same 
delusions.  They  are  led  on  by  an  unwise  and 
sometimes  dishonest  counsel  and  end  in  con- 
fusion and  cruel  disillusionment.  The  great 
cities  are  full  of  such  peo})le.  Now  the  time 
to  get  ac(juainted  with  reality,  even  in  the 
realm  of  the  imagination,  is  childhood.  This 
does  not  mean  the  destroying  of  dreams,  it 


186  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

does  not  mean  that  high  hopes  are  to  be 
(lushed  ruthlessly  to  the  ground,  that  the  beau- 
tiful visions  of  youth  are  to  be  cnished  with- 
out pity  by  the  sober,  matured  experience  and 
wisdom  of  age,  but  it  does  mean  that  nobody 
who  is  truly  loyal  to  his  children  will  permit 
them  to  grow  up  with  an  hal)itually  wander- 
ing mind  and  playing  forever  or  at  all  with 
illusions  which  have  no  solid  foundations  on 
the  earth.  It  is  all  right  to  hitch  j-our  wagon 
to  a  star,  but  one  must  be  very  sure  that  it  is 
a  star  and  not  a  will-o'-the-wisp.  They  look 
very  much  alike  at  times!  And  a  star  to 
which  you  can  hitch  is  a  harnessed  star  in  any 
case! 

In  this  matter  the  mind  is  very  much  like 
an  aeroplane.  Getting  into  the  air  is  com- 
paratively simple.  It  is  a  question  of  how 
and  where  j^ou  will  come  down  that  makes  the 
experiment  worth  while  and  safe  and  inter- 
esting. Otherwise  it  would  be  just  as  well  to 
jump  off  the  roof  of  a  twenty-five-story 
building.  The  old  idea  was  to  let  the  mind 
just  wander  and  then  rely  that  the  beautiful 
dreams  of  childhood,  being  a  free  and  delight- 
ful and  irresponsible  flight  in  the  fairyland  of 
youth,  by  and  by  would  be  abandoned  for 
solider  and  more  substantial  things.  But  the 
sober  truth  is  that  the  disorganization  of  the 


HARNESSING  THE  IMAGINATION        137 

mind,  left  for  any  considerable  period  with- 
out re.sponsil)le  control,  tends  to  destroy  con- 
trol altogether  and  makes  the  resumption  of 
control,  when  direction  is  desired,  a  very  seri- 
ous matter.  We  live  in  a  world  of  law.  The 
law  of  the  mind  is  no  less  a  law  when  it  has 
to  do  with  intangible  things  than  when  it  is 
dealing  witli  material  matters.  In  children 
this  is  especially  necessary  because  the  line  be- 
tween actuality  and  imagination  is  so  faintly 
outlined  in  any  case.  Nobody  would  dream 
of  letting  a  little  child  go  out  into  the  street 
on  a  cold  winter  morning  in  its  night-dress 
because,  looking  out  upon  tlie  sunlit,  snow- 
co\'ered  landscape  and  believing  it  a  fairyland, 
the  cliild  proposed  to  go  out  without  sufficient 
ck^thing.  To  permit  this  would  be  called  in- 
sanity on  the  part  of  the  parents.  But  is  it 
any  less  irrational  to  permit  children  to  take 
their  illusions  into  the  realities  of  life  without 
guidance  and  without  control?  This  also  I 
call  harnessing  the  imagination.  It  is  saying 
"Whoa"  to  unreality  and  vision  when  they 
tend  to  destroy  the  sense  of  clearness  and  to 
mislead  the  mind.  Upon  some  of  the  most 
im])()rtant  human  interests  in  the  world  at 
this  moment,  the  vast  majority  of  parents  are 
saying  absolutely  not  a  word  to  the  unbridled 
and    uninstrueled    imafi-ination    of    their    chil- 


138  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

dren.  I  refer,  of  course,  to  matters  of  sex. 
And  for  this  neglect  we  are  reaping  a  fearful 
crop  of  immoralities  which  could  have  been 
avoided  by  the  principle  of  harnessing  im- 
agination and  making  this  most  important 
faculty  of  the  mind  a  help  instead  of  a  hin- 
drance to  sound  mental  development. 

"The  use  of  traveling,"  says  Dr.  Johnson, 
"is  to  regulate  imagination  by  reality  and  in- 
stead of  thinking  how  things  may  be  to  see 
them  as  they  are."  Now  cliildren  cannot  be 
great  travelers.  But  they  can  be  given  the 
result  of  much  mental  journeying  by  the 
guidance  and  instruction  of  mature  and 
trained  minds.  And  this  function,  both  for 
enriching  on  the  one  hand  and  for  restraining 
on  the  other,  belongs  of  right  and  duty  to  the 
parents  who  should  take  the  childhood  equiv- 
alent for  traveling,  namelj^,  the  use  of  the 
imagination,  well  in  hand  and  so  link  the  re- 
ality with  the  dream  that  the  strength  of  one 
and  the  glow  of  the  other  will  both  be  re- 
tained. Let  the  child-mind  glow  all  it  wants 
to  glow  and  let  it  shine  wdth  all  the  brilliance 
of  which  it  is  capable.  But  let  us  take  care 
that  it  does  not  produce  sunstroke  or  confla- 
gration. It  is  easy  to  burn  up  the  mind  of  a 
child  by  the  extinction  of  the  sense  of  reality. 
It  is  easier  even  to  cause  it  to  be  blighted  into 


HARNESSING  THE  IMAGINATION        139 

listlessness  and  incapacity  by  becoming  over- 
heated with  illusions  and  dreaming.  The  re- 
sponsibility for  either  calamity  must  be  taken 
by  the  earliest  guides  and  teachers  of  the  child. 
A  harnessed  imagination  is  likely  to  emerge 
in  a  chastened  steady  glow  which  illuminates 
without  burning  and  which  clears  the  pathway 
without  blinding  the  eyes. 


Let  a  father,  then,  as  soon  as  his  son  Is  bom,  con- 
ceive first  of  all  the  best  possible  hopes  of  him,  for 
he  will  thus  grow  the  more  solicitous  about  his  im- 
provement from  the  very  beginning,  since  it  is  a  com- 
plaint without  foundation  that  "to  very  few  people 
is  granted  the  faculty  of  comprehending  what  is  im- 
parted to  them  and  that  most  through  dullness  of 
understanding  lose  their  labor  and  their  time."  For 
on  the  contrary  you  will  find  the  greater  number  of 
men,  both  ready  in  conceiving  and  quick  in  learning, 
since  such  quickness  is  natural  to  man ;  and  as  birds 
are  born  to  fly,  horses  to  run  and  wild  beasts  to  show 
fierceness,  so  to  us  peculiarly  belong  activity  and 
sagacity  of  understanding,  whence  the  origin  of  the 
mind  is  thought  to  be  from  heaven.  But  dull  and 
unteachable  persons  are  no  more  produced  in  the 
course  of  nature  than  are  persons  marked  by  mon- 
strosity and  deformities ;  such  are  certainly  but  few. 
It  will  be  proof  of  this  assertion  that  among  boys 
good  promise  is  shown  in  the  far  greater  number  and 
if  it  passes  off  in  progress  of  time  it  is  manifest  that 
it  is  not  natural  ability  but  care  that  was  wanting. 

— QuiNTiLiAN  on  Natural  Ability  and  Training. 


VII 
MENTAL  SELF-ORGANIZATION 

The  multiplication  of  power  through  or- 
ganization has  become  one  of  the  common- 
place observations  of  our  industrial  life.  On 
every  side  we  see  how  enterprises  increase  not 
only  their  efficiency  but  the  area  of  their  in- 
fluence and  utilize  all  sorts  of  collateral  and 
allied  interests  in  enlarging  their  productivity 
and  power.  So  generally  is  this  principle 
now  understood  and  applied  industrially  that 
there  seems  to  be  grave  danger  that  we  shall 
become  overorganized  in  some  directions  and 
sacrifice  to  it  the  power  of  individual  initia- 
tive, which  is,  after  all,  the  most  valuable 
thing  which  civilization  has  brought  to  man- 
kind. 

The  only  domain  where  this  enormous 
power  of  organization  does  not  appear  to  be 
recognized  is  in  the  region  of  the  individual 
life  and  mind.  Nearly  every  man  organizes 
or  tries  to  organize  his  work.  Comparatively 
few  men  do  or  try  to  organize  themselves  for 
greater  efficiency  and  power.  And  yet  tlie 
two  i^rocesses  are  very  similar,  they  involve 

141 


142  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

almost  exactly  the  same  principles  and  they 
bring  almost  the  same  results  when  the  work 
has  been  properly  done.  The  difference, 
where  there  is  a  difference,  arises,  of  course, 
that  in  one  case  you  are  dealing  with  mind  and 
will  and  in  the  other  you  are  dealing  simply 
with  things,  and  the  latter  are,  of  course,  more 
easily  handled  and  directed.  But  it  is  not  less 
possible  to  organize  selfhood  and  create  a 
compact  and  thoroughly  effective  mental  or- 
ganization for  one's  self  than  it  is  to  so  relate 
mere  things  as  to  make  each  supplement  and 
help  the  other.  The  various  capabilities  of 
the  mind  and  the  various  interests  of  the  men- 
tal structure  are,  in  fact,  so  far  as  we  can 
judge,  planned  for  just  such  coordination. 
And  it  would  naturally  seem  to  be  the  first 
business  of  life,  and  the  earliest  as  well,  to 
make  the  adjustments  in  a  manner  to  secure 
the  highest  and  best  results. 

With  the  psychological  problem  here  in- 
volved it  is  not  my  purpose  now  to  deal.  On 
the  practical  side,  with  which  this  book  deals, 
the  way  and  the  results  to  be  obtained  are  so 
plain  that  no  man  need  err  therein.  The  first 
business  in  education  of  any  sort  should  con- 
template just  this  matter  as,  in  fact,  the. 
old-fashioned  education,  though  largely  uncon- 
sciously, did.     When  the  old-fashioned  school- 


MENTAL  SELF-ORGANIZATION  143 

masters  insisted  that  the  object  of  education 
was  not  facts  or  knowledge  but  disciphne, 
they  meant  substantially  this  very  thing. 
They  saw  that  isolated  facts  were  not  knowl- 
edge, and  they  perceived  very  clearly  that  the 
mastery  of  certain  principles  made  the  discov- 
ery of  many  kinds  of  facts  easy  and  sure. 
What  they  had  in  mind  was  simply  that  dis- 
cipline toughened  the  mental  fiber  and  made 
men  capable  of  thinking.  But,  in  fact,  what 
it  really  did  was  so  to  coordinate  the  mental 
faculties  as  to  make  it  easy  to  turn  from  one 
thing  to  another  and  take  with  the  turn  all 
that  was  available  for  the  new  subject.  It 
was  the  ability  to  apply  all  previous  knowl- 
edge to  a  new  theme  and  to  bring  to  bear  all 
former  experience  and  contact  with  facts  and 
interests  upon  the  fresh  question  propounded, 
which  gave  the  aspect  of  a  disciplined  mind. 
It  was,  in  fact,  mental  organization.  It  was 
the  power  of  utilizing  everything  for  every- 
thing else  that  was  thus  acquired,  whenever  it 
was  really  acquired. 

Take  now  the  simple  observation  here  set 
forth  and  apply  it  to  any  school,  a  prepara- 
tory or  higli  school  for  choice,  and  observe 
what  happens.  The  great  mass  of  boys  and 
girls  rarely  carry  the  information  tliey  secure 
in  one  department  to  another.     They  rarely 


144  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

apply  the  principles  learned  in  one  sphere  of 
inquiry  to  the  i^roblems  of  another.  The  in- 
formation they  have  secured  seems  to  be 
packed  away  like  legal  documents  in  separate 
boxes  which  are  taken  out  and  opened  and  ex- 
amined when  that  particular  thing  is  men- 
tioned. In  fact,  we  are  seeing  exactly  this 
thing  in  the  liighly  specialized  education  of 
to-day,  Avhere  an  expert  in  one  department  is 
just  a  little  proud  of  the  fact  that  he  does  not 
know  anything  about  anything  else,  holding 
that  this  in  some  mysterious  way  makes  him 
more  competent  and  effective  in  his  own.  I 
have  heard  of  performances  on  the  part  of 
highly 'developed  specialists,  doctors  of  philos- 
ophy, with  regard  to  the  most  elementary  mat- 
ter outside  of  their  own  special  line  of 
work  which  should  have  made  them  ashamed 
to  show  themselves  in  educated  companion- 
ship. But  they  were  not  ashamed.  They 
rather  plumed  themselves  on  their  ignorance 
of  what  everybody  ought  to  know. 

I^ow  the  process  of  coordinating  knowl- 
edge and  establishing  a  mental  organization 
is,  like  all  other  processes,  easiest  when  the 
mind  is  most  free  from  hindrances  and  while 
the  powers  of  acquisition  are  most  keen  and 
sensitive,  which,  of  course,  means  that  the 
period  of  cliildhood,  that  is,  very  young  child- 


MENTAL  SELF-ORGANIZATION  1  i5 

hood,  is  the  hest  time  to  begin  this  work. 
What  has  been  said  about  language  and  hui- 
guage  study  will  apply  here  with  eonspicuous 
force  because  words  and  forms  of  words, 
phrases  and  word  stems,  can  be  carried  over 
from  one  department  of  knowledge  to  anotlier 
with  telling  power  for  welding  together  tlie 
facts  of  one  dej^artment  with  those  of  an- 
other. The  same  words  used  in  different  re- 
lations, in  differing  senses  and  with  varied 
applications,  make  one  of  the  best  means  for 
securinof  the  result  desired.  In  a  similar  wav, 
mathematical  definitions  can  be  applied  in  so 
many  ways  and  to  so  many  things  wliich  seem 
to  be  unrelated  to  each  other  that  the  stimu- 
lus to  find  relations  becomes  a  habit  and  when 
the  habit  of  finding  other  relations  than  the 
obvious  one,  or  the  one  directly  in  view,  is 
estabhshed  the  business  of  mental  organiza- 
tion has  fairly  begun.  And  wlien  this  process 
is  begun  in  a  young  child,  it  has  an  advantage 
which  no  amount  of  mere  cramming  or  in- 
dustrious memorizing  of  isolated  facts  can 
possibly  match.  The  reason  why  it  so  often 
happens  that  a  student  can  get  good  marks  in 
a  given  subject  and  ajipear  from  examination 
papers  to  know  considerable  about  a  subject, 
and  yet  betray  in  five  minutes  of  conversation 
absolute  stu])i(]ity  and  helj)lessness  in  tlie  re- 


146  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

gion  with  which  tlie  examination  seems  to  im- 
ply famihar  knowledge,  arises  from  precisely 
what  has  been  just  stated.  Facts  have  been 
cranuned  into  the  mind  ready  to  be  pulled  out 
for  an  examiner.  But  there  has  been  no  co- 
ordination of  these  facts  with  other  facts 
which  makes  them  usable  for  anything  but 
an  examination  paper.  The  same  thing  can 
be  shown  in  many  other  ways.  It  is  a  possible 
explanation  why  often  an  honor  man  proves 
so  disappointing  a  member  of  society  after 
leaving  college. 

Mental  self-organization,  however,  is  not 
merely  the  multiplication  of  knowledge.  It 
is  the  development  of  selfhood  as  well.  And 
here  comes  in,  perhaps,  the  most  important 
element  of  the  whole  problem  of  child  train- 
ing. Such  organizatioa  is  really  training  in 
the  use  and  application  of  will-power.  The 
intellectual  discoveries  made  through  the  ap- 
plication of  principles  learned  in  one  depart- 
ment of  knowledge  to  the  problems  and  de- 
velopment of  another,  almost  irresistibly  breed 
a  purpose  to  do  this  kind  of  thing  constantly 
and  make  for  the  gro^\i:h  of  the  will  to  study, 
the  purpose  to  know,  the  habit  of  inquiry 
or  whatever  you  choose  to  call  it,  and,  this  es- 
tablished, you  have  again  another  steel  girder 
of  the  mental  organization  in  place.     The  will 


MENTAL  SELF-ORGANIZATION  147 

to  study,  the  purpose  to  know,  generally  flags 
when  the  mind  conceives  and  originates  noth- 
ing on  its  own  account.  But  give  it  constant 
exercise  in  originating,  give  it  a  steady  dis- 
play of  its  own  power  to  make  fresh  and 
original  applications  of  its  own  skill  and 
knowledge,  and  you  stimulate  naturally  and 
strongly  the  disposition  and  the  habit  of  doing 
this  thing. 

Anyone  who  has  had  anything  to  do  with 
children  as  students  must  have  observed  the 
time  come  when  the  cliild's  mind  seemed  au- 
tomatically to  stop.  The  child  stops  listen- 
ing, begins  to  play  with  something  or  fidgets 
and  wants  to  be  released.  Just  what  has  hap- 
pened at  that  moment?  Very  probably  the 
child  has  become  tired  of  simply  being  stuffed 
with  things,  however  excellent  in  tliemselves 
or  however  interesting  in  themselves,  which 
did  not  relate  themselves  to  anything  which 
was  already  in  the  child's  mind  or  within  the 
sphere  of  the  child's  interests.  It  simply  got 
tired  of  being  stuffed  with  wliat  was  sup- 
posed by  the  teacher  or  parent  to  be  good 
for  it.  There  was  nothing  mysterious  aliout 
it.  It  was  just  like  stopping  eating  wlicii 
the  appetite  was  fully  sated.  And  since  I 
have  mentioned  eating,  may  I  observe,  in 
passing,    have    we    not    all    noticed    how    we 


118  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

tempt  sick  children  or  sick  adults,  for 
that  matter,  to  eat?  Food  is  prepared  with 
daintiness  and  attractively  served  and  chosen 
with  reference  to  condition  and  result.  Has 
not  many  a  patient  been  beguiled  into  taking 
nutrition  from  which,  presented  in  the  com- 
mon})lace  way,  he  would  have  turned  with 
loathing  or  disgust?  Everyone  knows  this 
experience  to  some  extent.  Why  is  not  that 
principle  sound  when  dealing  with  a  tender 
mind?  In  fact,  is  any  other  principle  sound 
or  rational? 

But  again,  you  begin  with  the  things  which 
are  the  matters  of  supreme  interest  to  a  child 
and  you  have  instantaneous  attention.  You 
show  that  the  play,  the  last  book  read,  the 
tennis-court,  the  bicycle,  the  wheelbarrow,  the 
water  barrel,  to  mention  only  some  of  those 
which  I  myself  have  used,  illustrate  principles 
of  geology  or  geometry  or  geography  or  a 
hundred  other  things,  and  every  one  of  these 
things  becomes  a  subject  of  attention  and 
scrutiny  for  further  relations.  You  thus 
make  the  interest  in  knowledge  equal  the  in- 
terest in  the  play  or  diversion;  in  fact,  you 
hitch  the  two  together  and  very  often  your 
boy  will  come  from  the  tennis-court  wath  some 
obsen-ation  about  angles  about  which  liis  mind 
has  been  subconsciously  working  wliile  he  was 


MENTAL  SELF-ORGANIZATION  119 

having  his  fun.  He  will  come  hack  from 
digging  in  the  sand  with  remarks  ahont  Cie- 
sar's  ramparts  and  ditches,  using  his  Latin 
terms  for  them,  sho^ving  that  snhconscionsly 
he  has  been  applying  what  he  learned  in  liis 
last  lesson.  He  will  astound  you  by  compar- 
ing some  tiny  rivulet,  in  its  pathway  in  the 
garden,  with  the  process  of  erosion,  and  there 
you  are!  That  is  what  I  call  mental  organi- 
zation and  when  a  cliild  begins  to  do  that,  he 
begins  to  organize  himself.  And  what  he  or- 
ganizes himself  is  his  very  own  and  constitutes 
his  reserve  stock  of  mental  power,  for  the 
grasp  and  attack  on  new  things. 

When  this  method  is  intelligently  directed 
by  a  conscientious  and  obser\ing  parent  in 
connection  with  the  fertilizing  methods  of 
which  I  have  spoken  and  with  the  careful  ex- 
cision of  waste  matter  to  which  I  have  also  re- 
ferred, you  get  results  that  are  simply  aston- 
ishing and  are  a  joy  and  delight  to  tlie 
parent's  heart.  There  is  no  satisfaction,  cer- 
tainly very  few  satisfactions  in  life,  so  full  of 
pleasure  and  delight  as  watching  this  ])rocess 
at  work.  The  advance  in  sell'-control  and 
will  power  in  all  directions  because  governed 
by  knowledge  and  not  l)y  caprice  is  among  the 
choicest  com])cnsations  of  all. 

Now,  children  can  be  tauiilit  a   thoroiiojilv 


150  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

scholarly  and  scientific  method  of  going  about 
these  tilings  which  they  need  not  alter 
throughout  life.  For  example,  some  years 
ago  a  gi'oup  of  children  trained  by  this 
method  had  learned  that  the  "Encyclopaedia 
Britannica"  was  a  storehouse  of  all  kinds  of 
interesting  information  and  if  you  wanted  to 
know  anything  about  a  given  subject,  that 
was  a  good  place  to  seek  the  information. 
They  happened  to  read  an  interesting  article 
on  the  subject  of  chess  and  chess  players. 
They  had  never  seen  chessmen  nor  did  they 
know  the  slightest  thing  about  the  game.  In- 
terest being  aroused,  one  of  them  suggested 
finding  out  more  about  it.  They  got  down 
the  "Britannica"  and  found  the  article  on 
chess,  found  it  could  be  played  on  a  checker- 
board which  they  had,  devised  impromptu 
chessmen  and  learned  the  game  from  that  ar- 
ticle by  simply  taking  one  statement  after 
another  and  working  it  out.  They  all  play 
chess  with  pleasure  and  considerable  skill  and 
not  less  so  because  of  the  rather  unique  way  in 
which  the  knowledge  was  acquired.  What 
interested  me,  however,  was  not  that  they  had 
learned  to  play  chess  but  that  they  had  learned 
to  play  a  far  more  important  and  useful  and, 
to  me,  more  exciting  game,  namely,  the  pur- 
suit of  knowledge.     Nor  was  it  strange  that 


MENTAL  SELF-ORGAXIZATIOX  151 

at  a  later  period  when  it  came  to  laying  out  a 
tennis-court  the}''  got  the  proper  dimensions 
from  the  same  source.  Now  the  significance 
of  all  this  is  not  that  they  got  the  facts  they 
w^anted.  But  they  had  so  organized  tliem- 
selves  and  their  resources  and  had  so  familiar- 
ized themselves  witli  at  least  one  tool  of 
knowledge  that  they  had  made  their  own  a 
scholastic  method  whicli  is  daily  employed  in 
every  scholar's  study  in  tlie  hind.  It  was  not 
strange  that  one  of  the  children  who  did  this, 
afterward,  when  he  had  an  enforced  hour  of 
"study"  in  the  liigh  scliool,  spent  it  getting 
stores  of  interesting  information  from  the 
cyclopaedias,  and  that  two  of  these  children 
prepared  for  a  certain  history  examination  by 
simply  reading  the  cyclopfedia  articles  liaving, 
of  course,  previously  had  their  minds  gener- 
ally familiarized  with  the  broad  outlines  of  the 
subject. 

Of  course,  at  first  blush,  it  seems  some\\  hat 
uncann}^  and  unfitting  to  see  a  rather  small 
child  struggling  with  a  big  cyclopaedia.^     But 

1  It  occurs  to  nie  while  reading  tiio  proof  of  tins  cliiii)tfr 
that  here  was  one  of  those  hajijn-  accidents  of  life  which  jrave 
it  zest  and  enjoyment.  The  conjunction  of  the  child  and  the 
encyclopaedia  was  the  most  natural  in  the  world.  Sec  Die 
derivation  of  the  word  encyclopedia  from  tyKVKXio^,  circidar 
and  waiSela,  education,  bringing  up  a  child  (nali).  Who  has 
a  better  right  to  use  an  encyclopaedia  than  the  cliild  for 
whom  it  was  named? 


152  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

is  it  any  more  uncanny,  except  for  habit  and 
association,  than  to  see  a  small  child  with  a 
bi^'  express  wagon  or  a  big  tricycle  or  any 
other  object  twice  as  big  as  itself?  The  fact 
is,  we  have  accustomed  ourselves  to  imagining 
that  the  child  mind  must  be  kept  in  the  region 
of  the  trivial,  stuj^id  and  foolish  and  have 
oftentimes  rigorously  excluded  all  the  serious 
things  which  not  onlj^  w^ould  prove  as  natural 
as  the  others  to  the  child  but  far  more  interest- 
ing. The  latter  have  a  far  greater  natural  re- 
lation to  the  growing  child  intellect  and  the 
capacity  and  desire  for  self-expression  and 
self-organization  which  every  healthy  cliild 
feels.  There  is  no  doubt  about  this  whatever. 
All  that  it  usually  w^ants  is  opportunity  and 
intelligent  guidance.  The  child  will  usually 
do  the  rest  and  supply  the  natural  suggestion 
for  the  next  step  in  any  given  direction. 

There  has  been  a  good  deal  said,  first  and 
last,  in  pedagogical  circles  about  concentra- 
tion through  desire,  that  is,  getting  interest 
and  attention,  through  doing  what  you  want 
to  do,  and  there  is  much  to  be  said  for  this 
idea.  But  concentration  which  is  based  on 
desire  fails  when  the  desire  fails.  Concentra- 
tion which  lasts  is  based  upon  a  disciplined 
will,  and  a  trained  will  is  acquired,  so  far  as  I 
have  observed,  by  one  process  only,  namely. 


MENTAL  SELF-ORGANIZATION  153 

the  constant  facing  of  matters  which  have 
both  the  imperative  of  interest  and  necessity 
behind  them.  With  children's  minds  the  im- 
perative of  interest  is  usually  great  enough  of 
itself  to  secure  concentration.  And  that  im- 
perative, sufficiently  developed,  causes  intel- 
lectual cravings  which  amount  to  a  necessity 
by  and  by  and  almost  automatically  compel 
attention  and  concentration  upon  the  things 
which  are  before  the  mind.  There  is  another 
lure  of  which  I  shall  speak  in  the  next  chapter 
but  that  comes  somewhat  later.  In  general, 
as  the  self-organization  advances  you  get 
stronger  and  stronger  will  power  because  you 
are  getting  repeated  applications  of  the  will 
to  matters  of  knowledfje.  The  voung'  mind 
finds  that  there  is  a  possibility  for  hop,  skip 
and  jump  in  the  mental  world  as  certainly  as 
in  the  physical  world.  It  finds  that  there  are 
"pace  makers"  and  "record  jumps,"  that  there 
are  mental  "milers"  and  "100-yard  dashes" 
and  all  the  rest  of  it,  if  you  want  to  use  that 
terminology,  and  that  discovery  brings  into 
the  mental  realm  precisely  the  same  operative 
motives  that  apply  on  the  athletic  field.  Only 
you  have  joy  in  distancing  some  mental  com- 
petitor instead  of  some  mere  man  of  legs. 

Concentration  through   tlie  trained   will   is 
the  secret  of  all  successful  self-ori>anization. 


154  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

Most  men  have  no  power  to  organize  them' 
selves  or,  if  they  have,  make  no  use  of  it. 
Else  why  can  so  very  few  men  manage 
everybody  and  everything  in  this  land?  Why 
is  the  chasm  between  your  captain  of  indus- 
try and  the  mass  of  men  so  wide  and  so  deep  ? 
Simply  because  most  men  are  content  to  let 
somebody  else  organize  their  capabilities  and 
powers  into  his  particular  scheme  and  when 
his  scheme  requires  their  elimination,  out  they 
go.  But  a  man  who  is  thoroughly  self-organ- 
ized cannot  be  taken  thus  unawares  and  cannot 
be  thrown  out  of  his  relations  entirely  on  any 
man's  dictum  but  his  own.  Holding  firm 
grasp  on  himself,  he  keeps  a  clear  eye  on  all 
his  relations  and  when  he  discovers  that  some- 
body else  is  more  potent  in  his  life  than  he  is 
himself,  he  takes  prompt  and  often  di'astic 
measures  to  see  to  it  that  he  restores  himself 
to  premiership  of  his  own.  life.  The  so-called 
strong  man  of  industry,  the  so-called  man  of 
power,  with  vast  control  over  many  things  is 
a  possibility  only  in  a  civilization  where  most 
peojile  are  relatively  incapable  of  minding 
their  own  affairs  or  regulating  their  own  lives. 
I  know  nothing  that  so  develops  self-govern- 
ment and  self -regulative  energy  as  the  proc- 
ess I  have  above  described,  namely,  of  coor- 
dinating   all    kinds    of    knowledge    so    that 


MENTAL  SELF-ORGANIZATION  155 

application  of  that  which  pertains  to  one 
thing  or  one  department  is  smoothly  and 
promptly  applied  in  another.  In  a  child  it 
can  he  readily  and  effectively  taught.  It  is 
the  secret  of  effectiveness  in  study  and  self- 
suhordination  to  a  particular  task.  In  a  cer- 
tain measure  it  is  also  the  secret  of  happiness 
in  life. 

INIental  self-organization  brings  in  its  train 
another  beneficent  result  which  is  of  greatest 
importance  in  study  and  life,  namely,  the  ma-> 
turing  judgment.  It  is  impossible  for  any 
length  of  time  to  i)ractice  bringing  the  knowl- 
edge of  one  department  into  every  other  de- 
partment of  knowledge  without  gradually 
coming  to  compare  the  relative  usefulness  and 
availability  of  what  has  been  gained.  Thus 
a  truth  which  is  found  to  be  true  in  half -a- 
dozen  different  forms  of  mental  effort  so6n, 
by  that  fact,  acquires  a  place  in  the  mental 
machinery  which  is  firmer  and  of  greater 
weight  than  one  not  so  generally  capable  of 
a])j)lication.  The  comparison  makes  itself 
and  wlien  the  tiling  has  taken  jilace  often 
enougli  the  com])arison  is  made  consciously 
and  takes  the  form  of  conscious  judgment  on 
the  values  of  the  things  gained.  Children  do 
this  quite  as  readily  as  older  people  if  they 
are  given  the  chance,  and  while  they  do  not 


156  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

call  it  "judgment,"  that  is,  in  fact,  what  it  is, 
and  thus  the  hahit  of  comparison  and  exact 
ohservation,  with  a  view  to  comparison,  stead- 
ily grows.  IMoreover,  it  develops  scrutiny 
on  first  acquaintance  with  the  ultimate  end  in 
view  and  thus  you  have  developing  the  habits 
of  foresight  and  inference  which  lead  to 
careful  and  sound  reasoning.  Tliis  is  par- 
ticularly  true  in  matters  of  natural  history  and 
sciences,  and  the  thousands  of  simple  facts 
about  life,  which  are  within  the  range  of  com- 
mon experience.  They  are  generally  neg- 
lected to  be  sure,  but,  organized  and  built  into 
the  fixed  laws  of  the  mental  life,  they  are  a 
conserving  and  constructive  force  which  is  not 
to  be  despised. 

Now,  there  remains  but  one  more  step  after 
these  have  become  habitual  and  that  is  to 
make  the  organization  work.  And  the  means 
to  this  is  expression.  Allien  a  child  has  done 
anything  capably  the  impulse  is  to  express  the 
satisfaction  in  the  achievement,  and  here  all 
the  previous  training  combines  to  get  an  ex- 
pression which  is  cogent,  clear  and  precise  and 
so  finally  you  have  secured  just  w^hat  all  edu- 
cation should  bring  about,  namely,  the  power 
to  observe,  to  apply,  to  infer  and  to  express 
the   results   of   all   these   mental   operations.^ 

1  The  language  is  President  Eliot's.     See  the  epoch-making 


MENTAL  SELF-ORGAN IZATIOX  157 

After  these  have  been  established  even  in  an 
elementary  way  you  have  the  basis  for  per- 
sonal self-government  and  personal  self-ex- 
amination, and  whatever  comes  into  the  men- 
tal hopjier  will  have  to  be  ground  through, 
subjected  to  these  processes.  That  is  how  you 
get  a  trained  mind,  a  fidl  mind  and  a  balanced 
mind.  That  is  how  you  make  a  mind  that 
finds  its  springs  of  action  in  itself  and  not  in 
others.  Thus  you  build  up  self-organization 
steadily,  surely,  and  limited  only  by  the  amount 
of  time  and  attention  bestowed  upon  it  and 
by  the  capacity  and  industry  of  the  person 
who  directs  the  work.  But  there  is  nothing 
about  it  that  is  mysterious  or  supernatural. 
It  is  all  to  be  had  for  simply  the  consecration, 
to  use  a  religious  word,  which  will  devote  it- 
self to  this  duty  with  the  same  zeal,  the  same 
steadiness  and  self-sacrifice  with  which  other 
tasks  are  undertaken.  Even  moderately  })ur- 
sued,  it  yields  surprising  results.  Begiui  early 
enough  and  persisted  in,  it  becomes  a  life  asset 
to  the  child,  of  incomparable  value. 

Among  the  hundreds  of  letters  which  I  have 
received  on  this  sul) jcct  there  is  a  general  in- 
quiry about  the  question  of  dealing  witli  the 
will-power  of  children  when  it  takes  the  form 

essay,  "Wliorciii  Po]Milar  Education  has  Failed,"  in  his  Amer- 
ican Contributions  to  Civilization.     The  Century  Co.,  1S97. 


158  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

of  obstinacy.  When  children  are  "obstinate" 
people  generally  assume  that  the  child  has  a 
"strong  will."  That  is,  the  many  letters  I 
have  seen  seem  to  indicate  that  this  is  the  gen- 
eral opinion.  But,  in  fact,  an  obstinate  child 
has  usually  a  weak  will  rather  than  a  strong 
one  and  the  obstinacy  is  the  evidence  thereof. 
Obstinacy  arises  from  want  of  interest  and  in- 
ability to  catch  the  threads  of  thought  around 
which  interest  and  will-subjection  are  trained. 
When  not  due  to  physical  causes,  it  shows  sim- 
ply that  greater  effort  must  be  made  to  match 
the  natural  interests  and  tendencies  of  the 
child  by  more  interesting  experience  and 
greater  personal  force  of  mentality  by  the 
parent.  I  have  seen  a  very  obstinate  child 
brought  into  almost  servile  obedience  by  a 
teacher  who  simplj^  showed  in  her  dealing  with 
others  a  way  so  much  more  excellent  that  the 
weak  cliild  longed  to  be  led  into  the  same  path 
of  enjoyment  and  pleasure  in  which  those 
aroimd  it  were  obviously  proceeding.  With 
the  dawning  of  the  knowledge  of  its  own  in- 
abilit}'-  to  do  at  will  what  the  others  were  doing, 
the  sense  of  isolation  speedily  produced  the 
normal  desire  of  being  like  and  with  the  rest, 
and  the  end  of  the  problem  was  in  sight.  I 
have  seen  the  same  plan  followed  very  sue- 


MENTAL  SELF-ORGANIZATION  159 

cessfully  with  older  children  and  sometimes 
even  with  college  students. 

Throughout  this  discussion  the  reader  will 
not  be  deceived,  of  course,  by  the  employment 
of  certain  terms  into  imagining  that  all  these 
things  are  attained  at  once  or  in  highly  de- 
veloped forms.  That  is  not  the  important 
thing.  The  important  thing  is  that  the 
mind  shall  be  started  right  and  not  be 
left  creeping  when  it  ought  to  be  walk- 
ing; that  it  shall  not  be  kept  in  bondage 
when  it  ought  to  be  developing  freedom;  that 
it  should  not  be  permitted  to  indulge  itself  on 
feeble  stuff  which  makes  no  draft  upon  its 
growing  and  acquisitive  powers  when  it  ought 
to  be  kept  trained  day  by  day  for  severe  tasks 
and  build  up  strength  which  is  resident  in  itself 
rather  than  dependent  upon  outside  stimu- 
lus and  outside  nutrition.  Mental  foraging 
should  be  encouraged,  books  of  all  kinds  being 
left  for  casual  examination  and  for  the  mo- 
mentary impulse  to  look  at  them  and  some- 
times into  them.  jNIaterials  for  inquiry  and 
comparison  should  be  furnished  in  variety  and 
abundance  and  no  inquiry  left  to  caprice  or 
carelessness  and  never  to  indolence.  When 
the  attention  is  arrested  in  any  direction,  its 
possibilities  should  be  explored.     When  inter- 


160  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

est  develops  in  any  form,  its  collateral  rela- 
tions, especially  for  mental  organization, 
should  be  examined  and  the  fixed  laws  of  men- 
tal de\elopment  promptly  hitched  to  that 
interest.  The  attention  and  instruction  thus  be- 
stowed in  the  few  early  years  of  childhood  will 
convince  anyone  who  gives  them  that  there  is 
almost  no  subject  the  elements  of  which  can- 
not be  firmly,  clearly  and  rationally  fixed  in 
the  child  mind,  that  it  is  not  necessarj^  to  deal 
with  trivial  things,  w^hich  pass  with  the  using, 
but  that  the  serious,  abiding  principles  of  hu- 
man knoM^ledge  may  be  implanted  at  a  period 
when  most  peoj^le  still  indulge  in  baby  talk 
with  their  little  ones  and  hold  up  their  hands  in 
horror  when  someone  proj^oses  that  it  should 
begin  to  be  prepared  for  the  serious  work  of 
hfe. 

There  is  a  moral  phase  of  this  question  of 
self -organization  which  cannot  be  omitted 
though  I  have  strenuously  tried  to  avoid 
moralizing  throughout  these  discussions  for 
obvious  reasons.  It  is,  of  course,  true  that 
the  coincident  moral  growth  of  the  child,  with 
the  development  of  all  its  other  powers,  adds  a 
measure  of  strength  and  resource  which  is 
greater  than  anj''  other  single  element.  Care- 
ful mental  organization  is,  next  to  thorough 
religious    training,    the    soundest    safeguard 


MENTAL  SELF-ORGAXIZATION  l6l 

against  moral  delinquency  that  could  possibly 
be  devised.  JNIoral  defects  are  commonest 
where  the  ability  to  foresee  consequences  is 
least.  Once  you  train  a  child  to  look  only  a 
few  steps  beyond  the  immediate  relation  of 
anytliing  and  you  have  made  a  great  many  of 
the  moral  defects  of  childhood  not  impossible 
but  very  much  less  insistent,  because  most  of 
these  on  even  the  sliglitest  reflection  lose  their 
attractiveness.  I  have  observed  this  even  in 
very  small  children,  so  small,  in  fact,  that  I 
would  not  without  this  observation  have  be- 
lieved that  such  effective  and  deterrent  moral 
reflection  was  possible.  But  so  it  is.  Parents 
often  complain  of  the  bad  influences  upon 
their  own  cliildren  of  other  children,  which  is 
simply  admitting  that  some  other  child,  not  in- 
frequently one  of  inferior  opportunities  and 
breeding  but  higher  self-organization,  often 
induced  by  necessity  and  hardsliip,  is  leading 
and  governing  their  own.  The  building-up  of 
the  ability  for  coordination  and  the  habit  of 
reflection  which  is  incident  to  it  and  the  percep- 
tion of  relations  wliich  grow  out  of  any  given 
act  or  programme,  will  provide  a  ram})art 
against  many  moral  wrongs,  whicli  is  not  easily 
scaled.  Tliis  is  a  subject  by  itself  whicli  can- 
not be  treated  here,  ])ut  it  may  fairly  ])e  chiinied 
that  as  a  moral  protective  agency,  to  inculcate 


162  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

self-organization  and  the  observ^ation  of  ef- 
fects, relations  and  consequences,  is  one  of  the 
best  instruments  in  the  rearing  of  young 
people.  Here  again  leadership  is  power  and 
the  ability  to  discriminate,  in  even  the  most 
rudimentary  way,  operates  in  the  choice  of 
companionships,  the  estimate  of  influences, 
jealousy  for  one's  own  selfhood,  all  of  which 
are  safeguards  for  upright  character. 

The  multiplication  of  power  w^hich  comes 
through  effective  self -organization  diminishes 
by  just  so  much  the  number  of  individuals  who 
have  any  chance  for  entrance  into  the  citadel 
of  personality.  Into  a  trained  mind  the  num- 
ber of  persons  who  have  access  is  fewer  and 
they  are  of  liigher  quality  and  ability,  other 
things  being  equal,  than  those  who  have  free 
access  into  an  untrained  and  unorganized 
mind.  The  same  is  true  of  the  entire  person- 
ality, which,  organized  on  an  all-round  basis 
of  insight,  knowledge,  obsei'vation  and 
thought  for  ends  more  remote  than  those  which 
appear  on  the  surface,  has  a  wall  of  protection 
which  is  moral  insurance  of  the  highest  type. 


But  do  you,  parents,  impose  severe  exactions  on 
him  that  is  to  teach  your  boys :  that  he  be  perfect  in 
the  rules  of  grammar  for  each  word — read  all  histo- 
ries— know  all  authors  as  well  as  his  own  finger  ends ; 
that  if  questioned  at  hazard,  while  on  his  way  to  the 
thermse  or  the  baths  of  Phoebus,  he  should  be  able  to 
tell  the  name  of  Anchises'  nurse  and  the  name  and 
native  land  of  the  stepmother  of  Anchemolus,  tell  off- 
hand how  many  years  Acestes  lived,  how  many 
flagons  of  wine  the  Sicilian  king  gave  to  the  Phryg- 
ians. Require  of  him  that  he  mold  their  youthful 
morals  as  one  models  a  face  in  wax.  Require  of  him 
that  he  be  the  reverend  father  of  the  company  and 
check  every  approach  to  immorality. 
"This,"  says  the  father,  "be  the  object  of  your  care; 
and  when  the  year  comes  round  again,  receive  for 
your  pay  as  much  gold  as  the  people  demand  for  the 
victorious  charioteer." 

— Juvenal,   Satire   on  the   Estimate   of  the 
Teacher. 


VIII 
BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION 

One  of  the  standing  sources  of  distress  to 
the  college  faculties  of  this  country  at  the 
present  moment  is  the  immense  chasm  between 
the  interest  whicli  the  students  manifest  in 
athletics  and  that  which  they  sliow  in  scholarly 
achievement.  A  freshman  class  which  will 
easily  raise  a  thousand  dollars  for  its  football 
team  will  let  its  debaters  travel  to  a  rival  col- 
lege town  at  their  own  expense  and  even  when 
the  debate  is  held  in  its  own  borders,  attend  it 
in  very  small  numbers,  ^lany  thousands  of 
college  alumni  will  go  long  distances  to  see  the 
annual  football  game  between  their  colleges 
and  their  favorite  rivals,  who  will  not  take  the 
trouble  to  appear  at  Conuuencement  time  and 
who  know  absolutely  nothing  concerning  the 
great  educational  interests  of  tlie  college. 
People  who  are  in  hot  haste  to  condemn  the 
colleges  should  first  examine  the  ])ractices  of 
the  alumni.  Those  who  are  quick  to  visit 
wrath  upon  the  college  authorities  for  seeming 
to  yield  so  much  to  the  athletic  tendencies  and 
demands  of  the  student  body,  should  above  all 

165 


166  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

tilings  find  out  first  what  moves  the  vast  body 
of  parents  in  sending  their  sons  to  college. 
Even  the  most  casual  inquiry  along  this  line 
will  reveal  the  fact  that  most  of  the  alumni 
have  no  scholarly  tastes,  no  intellectual  ambi- 
tions, properly  to  be  described  as  such,  and  it 
should  not  be  very  strange  that  their  children 
are  lacking  in  the  same  direction.  Indeed,  it 
is  a  fair  question  to-day  whether  the  majority 
of  the  vast  and  steadily  increasing  student 
body  have  strictly  intellectual  or  educational 
purposes  in  entering  college.  Certainly  the 
major  activities  of  the  student  body  and  the 
distribution  of  their  time,  energy  and  force 
does  not  seem  to  indicate  this  to  be  the  case. 

And  yet  there  was  a  time  when  all  these 
young  people  were  as  susceptible  to  the  appeal 
of  the  mind  and  the  heroism  of  intellectual 
achievement  as  they  later  became  to  the 
glories  of  the  athletic  field.  There  was  a  time 
when  all  these  interests  were  contending  for 
the  premier  place  in  the  youthful  mind.  The 
desire  to  excel,  the  willingness  to  be  prominent, 
to  be  differentiated  from  the  mass  of  other 
children  and  young  people,  is  very  strong  in 
the  youthful  mind.  What  finally  assumes  th<j 
first  place  comes  to  that  dignity  by  a  per- 
fectly natural  route.  No  boy  loves  baseball 
better  than  football  except  for  reasons  which 


BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION       lG7 

can  readily  be  traced.  Xo  boy  comes  to  col- 
lege with  a  highly  developed  yearning  to  be  a 
tennis  champion  or  a  champion  shot-putter  or 
a  speedy  quarter-miler  without  having  had 
certain  well-defined  influences  operate  upon 
him  to  bring  about  this  result.  Where  the 
child  develops  interest,  the  agencies  which  make 
for  that  interest  have  been  at  work  and  have 
allied  themselves  with  the  child's  disposition  to 
know  and  shine  for  something  distinctive  to 
itself.  Ask  any  boy  what  he  plans  to  be  in 
after  life,  and  as  a  rule,  unless  he  has  had  his 
career  clearly  outlined  for  him  by  circum- 
stances which  dictate  his  future  in  an  absolute 
way,  he  will  respond  in  the  line  of  his  intensest 
interests,  entirely  oblivious  of  the  absurdity 
or  grotesqueness  of  his  choice.  Thus  tlie  son 
of  a  great  brewing  magnate  a  few  years  ago 
electrified  his  father,  a  wortliy  German  wlio 
had  pursued  his  profession  of  brewer  with  an 
eye  single  to  making  a  good  product,  after  the 
German  fashion,  and  who  tliouglit  only  of  see- 
ing his  son  succeed  him  in  his  great  cnter})rise, 
by  announcing  tliat  he  intended  to  become  an 
evangelist!  Inquiry  developed  the  fact  that 
he  had  had  as  a  teacher  a  man  who  was  a  great 
admirer  of  Dwight  I..  Moody.  lie  had  so 
portrayed  that  man  and  his  moral  and  s})i ritual 
influence  over  men  lo  tlie  l)rcwer's  son  tluit  lie 


1G8  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

had  captivated  his  imagination  and  aroused 
his  ambition  to  such  a  degree  that  the  youth 
thought  nothing  so  great,  nothing  so  admira- 
ble and  nothing  so  worthy  of  attainment  as 
such  a  place  in  the  esteem  of  men  as  he  imag- 
ined D.  L.  JNIoody  to  hold.  It  caused  a  family 
difficulty  of  great  proportions  and  was  years 
in  getting  settled  and,  when  it  was,  the  brew- 
er's son  did  not  succeed  to  his  father's  business. 
The  great  brewer,  and  he  was  a  man  of  splen- 
did qualities  and  character  as  well,  had  per- 
mitted another  ambition  to  be  bred  in  his  son 
than  the  one  he  hoped  would  develop  naturally 
and  found  too  late  that  the  soil  was  occuj)ied 
by  another  growth.  His  case  does  not  differ 
except  in  the  antithesis  from  that  of  thousands 
of  American  fathers. 

In  analyzing  the  case  just  named,  the  potent 
factor  should  not  be  overlooked  and  that  was 
a  teacher  who  had  himself  so  assimilated  the 
meaning  of  a  great  career  that  he  was  able  to 
awaken  the  longing  to  reproduce  that  career 
in  a  boy  whose  natural  surroundings  forbade 
such  an  ideal  in  the  ordinary  course  of  things 
from  even  getting  a  hearing.  Yet  it  was  the 
triumphant  one  in  the  boy's  mind.  Another 
fact  to  be  kept  in  mind  is  that  the  ideal  was  one 
worthy,  admirable  and  spiritually  and  intellec- 
tually attractive  in  itself.     It  is  rather  unfor- 


BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION       lfi9 

tunate  that  the  schohirly  personality  has  not 
always  been  attractive  either  in  the  character 
of  its  performances  or  in  the  i)resentati()n  of 
itself  to  the  youthful  mind.  The  liighest 
scholarship,  both  as  to  outstanding  character- 
istics and  the  personalities  whidi  re])resent  it, 
has  not  been  and  is  not  now  specially  attrac- 
tive to  youth.  This  can  be  amply  proven  by 
examining  the  current  caricatures  of  the 
scholar  as  a  person  wlio  is  full  of  abstractions, 
unpractical  and  generally  not  to  be  conii)an- 
ioned.  AVhatever  the  public  ma}'  think  of  the 
usefulness  of  the  teacher,  the  solid  and  unan- 
swerable fact  is  that  the  real  estimate  is  round 
in  his  classification  in  the  community,  which  is 
that  of  a  higher  menial.  It  is  entirely  within 
the  facts  to  say  that  the  mass  of  the  people  in 
any  given  city  feel  no  interest,  no  gratitude,  no 
particular  respect  for  the  teaching  force  of 
that  city  and  know  it  chiefly  through  the 
medium  of  complaints  or  trouble  of  st)me  kind 
in  connection  with  the  education  of  tlieir  chil- 
dren. This  fully  explains  why  a  street  laborer 
with  a  hoe,  scraping  mud  in  the  streets,  is  often 
paid  a  larger  wage  than  the  teaclu'r  who  is 
molding  the  minds  of  young  children. 
Money,  of  course,  is  not  the  standard  of 
finality  in  this  world  but  comi)ensatioii  follows 
pretty  closely  the  ])ublic  estim;ite  of  liie  srrv- 


170  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

ices  bestowed.     But  that,  of  course,  is  another 
question. 

What  I  am  trying  to  make  clear  is  that,  as 
the  case  stands  at  the  present  time,  if  you  get 
intellectual  ambition  for  any  child  you  get  it 
at  the  cannon's  mouth.  You  get  it  in  spite  of 
parental  negligence,  in  spite  of  communal  in- 
difference, in  spite  of  the  utter  neglect  of 
every  rational  means  by  which  intellectual  in- 
terest and  ambition  are  stirred  into  action. 
And  yet  the  mind  of  a  child  is  as  ready  to  re- 
ceive impulses  along  this  line  as  any  other. 
It  is  ready  to  contemplate  an  intellectual  hero, 
when  one  is  presented  to  its  attention,  as  any 
other.  It  stands  as  ready  to  follow  in  the 
pathway  of  emulation  after  a  strictly  intellec- 
tual ideal  as  any  other.  Indeed,  it  is  often 
found  to  be  so  to  such  a  degree  that  though 
neglected  at  home,  in  the  school  and  in  the 
community  at  large,  it  survives.  Sometimes 
it  is  created  by  some  far-seeing  and  enthusias- 
tic teacher,  but  generally  intellectual  ambition, 
when  it  comes  at  all,  comes  out  of  a  home  where 
such  ambitions  are  cherished  and  where  the 
triumphs  of  the  mind  are  rated  above  the  vic- 
tories of  the  body  and  where  the  scholar  is  not 
crouching  at  the  feet  of  the  football  hero, 
praying  for  a  few  fragments  of  time  for  his 
branch  of  knowledge,  but  the  real  leader  and 


BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION      171 

guide  of  humanity  without  whom  knowledge 
and  civilization  alike  must  perish.  I  can  well 
recall  as  a  child  visiting  the  home  of  one  of 
my  playmates  and  being  introduced  to  a  gen- 
tleman who  seemed  to  be  doing  all  the  talk- 
ing while  the  family  listened  with  reverence 
and  rapt  attention  to  what  he  was  saying,  and, 
asking  afterward  who  he  was,  was  told,  "He 
is  a  scholar!"  with  an  air  of  finality  that  as- 
sumed that  I  ought  to  know  that  a  "scliolar" 
was  a  person  of  such  distinction  that  everybody 
ought  to  keep  silent  and  listen.  It  is  not 
strange  that  every  one  of  that  family  of  boys, 
five  in  number,  who  that  evening  listened  to 
their  visitor,  impressed  with  the  reverence 
which  was  felt  by  their  parents  for  a  scholar, 
themselves  became  scholars  and  form  a  re- 
markable group  of  men  in  the  community 
where  they  live.  Though  engaged  in  widely 
differing  pursuits  they  are  scholars  all  of 
them  and  they  would  have  been  "scholarly" 
persons  no  matter  what  pursuit  they  gave 
themselves  to.  This  was  pureh"  a  case  of 
cause  and  effect  and  it  can  be  repeated  in  any 
home  wlien  the  proper  means  arc  taken. 

It  is  an  interesting  fact  also  tluit  intellectual 
ambition  has  the  first  o})])ortunity  witli  the 
child  and  tlie  loss  of  it  is,  therefore,  even  more 
reprehensible  in  those  who  suffer  it  to  be  lost. 


172  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

A  young  child  cannot  take  a  very  large  part 
in  affairs  until  its  physical  abilities  are  very 
considerably  developed.  It  has  its  games  and 
play,  to  be  sure,  but  these  are  within  a  very 
limited  area.  Its  mental  life,  on  the  other 
hand,  may  be  world-wide  almost  from  the 
start  through  the  processes  which  I  have  al- 
ready described.  Its  interests  intellectual  may 
be  diversified,  entertaining,  alluring  and  ex- 
citing in  a  thousand  directions  before  the  little 
feet  are  able  to  kick  a  football  or  it  has  the 
command  over  its  arms  required  to  catch  a 
thrown  ball  or  over  its  legs  to  run  a  base  suc- 
cessfully. The  mind  works  a  thousand  times 
as  fast  as  the  physical  structure.  You  can 
see  this  any  time  by  asking  a  child  to  write 
what  he  has  told  you  so  brightly  and  interest- 
ingly in  an  oral  discussion.  You  will  see  at 
once  that  his  hands  are  undeveloped,  the  mus- 
cles of  his  arms  stiff  and  unpliable,  and  hin- 
drances at  every  turn  fret  and  prevent  him 
from  moving  in  quick  response  to  his  mental 
activity.  That  is  simply  because  the  mind 
moves  much  more  rapidly  than  the  body  possi- 
bly can.  Thus  it  comes  about  that  ambitions 
of  an  intellectual  kind,  which  have  their  origin 
in  vivid  mental  images,  picturing  the  vast  in- 
fluence of  the  mind,  or  in  powers  which  are 
the  evidence  of  great  mental  force,  or  social 


BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION      173 

and  spiritual  revolutions  "vvhich  are  the  im- 
mediate outworking  of  the  powerful  thought, 
really  have  the  right  of  way  in  the  child  mind. 
The  only  reason  why  that  primacy  is  not  main- 
tained, is  because  it  is  neglected.  By  regular 
stages  the  phj^sical  life  is  permitted  to  be- 
come the  ideal  of  life.  The  book  gives  way  to 
the  sword  or  the  gun  or  the  football  or  some- 
thing else.  The  games  follow  largely  along 
similar  lines  and  by  the  time  the  boy  or  the 
girl  comes  to  the  place  where  the  blossoming 
mind  should  begin  to  realize  some  of  the 
things  which  it  has  been  contemplating  with 
longing,  it  has  become  deflected  from  the  in- 
tellectual to  the  physical  ideal,  if  it  happens  to 
be  a  boy,  or  the  social  idea,  if  it  happens  to  be 
a  girl,  and  the  ambition  to  excel  intellectually 
remains  only  as  a  desirable  asset  which  may 
possibly  be  secured  but  only  through  a  process 
which  is  necessarily  long  and  very  unpleasant. 
In  this  of  course  the  false  use  made  of  some 
of  the  noblest  emotions  materially  aid.  Pa- 
triotism means  to  fight  for  your  country. 
Hence  the  idealization  of  the  soldier,  the  sailor, 
the  battle-ship  and  the  man  behind  the  gun. 
The  triumplis  of  science,  of  art,  of  culture, 
of  statesmanship  are  neglected,  partly  from 
want  of  appreciation  and  partly  from  inca- 
pacity to  present  them,  and  the  ambitions  of 


171  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

the  child  sink  into  lower  and  more  material 
channels. 

While  all  this  is  going  on,  there  is  probably 
no  passion  of  the  American  people  about 
which  they  feel  themselves  so  sincere  as  the 
passion  for  education.  But  if  it  is  really  as 
sincere  as  it  seems  to  be,  and  there  are  grave 
doubts  on  this  point,  it  is  w  oefully  misdirected 
and  helpless.  Personally  I  do  not  believe  a 
man  when  he  tells  me  that  he  wants  above  all 
things  a  thorough  education  for  his  child  and 
then  does  not  make  the  slightest  effort  from 
one  year's  end  to  another  to  acquaint  himself 
wdth  the  means  and  the  persons  and  the  insti- 
tutions, public  and  private,  which  are  giving 
or  failing  to  give  his  child  the  education  so 
highly  extolled.  It  may  not  be  hypocrisj^  but 
it  looks  suspiciously  like  it.  I  have  absolutely 
no  confidence  in  the  utterances  of  such  a  person 
on  this  subject.  ]My  observation  is  that  people 
do  what  they  want  to  do.  They  go  after  the 
things  they  M^ant  most  and  first.  And  if  a 
father  w^anted  thorough  and  effective  educa- 
tion for  his  child  "above  and  beyond  all  other 
things,"  he  would  do  something  more  about  it 
than  simply  issue  eulogies  on  the  subject  of 
education  and  all  the  while  neglect  his  child. 
But  even  allo^ving  that  it  is  all  sincere,  it  in- 
dicates a  curious  want  of  knowledge  and  com- 


BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION      175 

mon  sense  to  imagine  that  a  Iiigh  and  intense 
longing  for  knowledge  and  the  things  of  the 
mind  will  grow  without  cultivation,  or  that  it 
will  survive  luxury,  coddling,  idleness  and  in- 
dulgences of  every  kind.  Yet  this  is  what  we 
see  on  all  sides.  The  wrongs  done  to  young 
children  by  the  neglect  of  their  intellectual  am- 
bitions and  aims  by  their  parents  is  one  of  the 
wickedest  things  about  the  American  home. 
It  is  losing  to  the  American  people  taste,  cul- 
ture, civilization  and  social  advances  of  incal- 
culable worth.  But  above  and  beyond  all  tliis, 
it  is  losing  for  a  large  fraction  of  the  human 
race  happiness  and  delight  beyond  computa- 
tion. 

Ambition  follows  interest  and  interest  is 
bred  by  the  study  of  models.  If  the  models 
presented  for  the  inspection  and  commended 
to  the  attention  of  the  young  child,  are  dis- 
tinctly of  an  intellectual  quality,  admiration 
for  the  intellectual  qualities  comes  by  a  per- 
fectly natural  method.  If  to  this  is  added 
conscious  progress  in  tlie  direction  in  whicli  the 
model  leads  as  ideal,  the  ambition  grows  by 
leaps  and  bounds.  It  has  alwa3^s  seemed  odd 
to  me  that  parents  did  not  utilize  their  own  ad- 
mirations for  the  l)cncfit  of  their  children. 
By  this  I  mean  that  their  I'avorite  figures  in 
history  and  life  are  rarely  lirld  nj)  and  thrir 


176  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

children  taught  to  look  upon  them  and  under- 
stand just  ^\'hy  they  are  worthy  of  admira- 
tion. But  whenever  this  is  done,  there  is  never 
any  doubt  as  to  the  result.  Why  is  Schiller 
the  best  loved  poet  of  the  Germans?  Because 
you  Mill  find  him  quoted  and  his  verses  re- 
peated in  the  thousands  of  German  households 
where  the  cliildren  hear  about  him  and  are 
familiar  with  his  work  long  before  they  have 
any  literary  sense  or  any  ability  to  make  any 
distinct  choices  of  a  literary  character.  Who 
made  Burns  the  national  poet  of  Scotland? 
The  homes  of  Scotland,  of  course.  That  is 
how  national  poets  are  made.  I  well  remem- 
ber a  time  ^^•hen  multitudes  of  children  were 
believed  to  be  unable  to  learn  how  to  sing. 
But  as  soon  as  they  began  to  hear  songs  and 
were  urged  to  believe  that  they  could  sing, 
they  broke  into  singing.  I  know  any  number 
of  children  whose  parents  believed  them  to  be 
incapable  of  strenuous  intellectual  work  till 
somebody  woke  them  up  and  showed  them 
conspicuous  examples  of  victorious  struggle 
and  made  them  admire  the  model  enough  to 
make  the  effort  to  go  and  do  likewise.  Hu:l, 
man  beings  insensibly  grow  to  be  like  what 
they  are  taught  to  admire  and  if  the  admirable 
qualities  of  the  intellectual  life  are  made  clear 
to  the  young  child,  they  will  love  knowledge 


BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION      177 

as  mucli  as  the}^  love  anything  else.  It  is  biTl 
simple  truth  to  say  that  we  have  not  exi)eetecl 
little  children  to  take  any  interest  in  the  great 
heroes  of  the  intellectual  life  and  consequently 
they  have  been  given  over  to  the  heroes  of 
lesser  accomplishments. 

When  we  speak  of  an  ambitious  child,  we 
usually  mean  a  child  that  has  found  a  specific 
direction  in  which  it  wishes  to  go.  And  that 
will  ordinarily  be  found  to  be  a  child  tliat  by 
some  process,  natural  or  unnatural,  has  had  its 
attention  kept  fixed  upon  something  which  it 
has  been  led  to  admire.  Why  should  the  ad- 
mirations of  a  child  be  left  to  accident  or 
caprice?  Wliy  should  we  not  select  the  tilings 
which  we  wish  the  youth  to  love  and  ])()iiit 
out  with  exactness  and  care  wliat  is  desir- 
able, what  is  beautiful  and  of  good  report, 
in  connection  witli  tlicm?  And  why  should 
not  such  a  process  be  the  result  of  a  dis- 
tinct plan  and  kept  distinctly  outlined  as  a 
part  of  the  cliild's  development?  I  have  in- 
terviewed many  successful  men  in  many  call- 
ings of  life  and  liave  uniformly  found  that 
they  were  inspired  to  make  the  efforts  which 
made  them  successful  nun  by  some  ])ersonal- 
ity,  sometimes  a  living  model,  sometimes  an 
historical  character  which  had  so  arrested  their 
attention  that  thev  felt  an  irresistible  desire  to 


178  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

follow  in  his  footsteps.  I  have  lately  heard 
of  a  youth  who  has  for  a  dozen  years  been  an 
incendiary  with  a  passion  for  setting  fires.  It 
is  now  known  that  his  father  was  a  firebug 
before  him  and  added  to  this  vicious  tendency 
a  lovable  personality  which  so  impressed  his 
young  son  that  he  glorified  the  criminal  habits 
of  his  father  and  made  them  the  ambition  of 
his  life.  All  of  which  suggests  a  phase  of 
this  subject  which  should  cause  deep  reflection 
on  the  part  of  parents.  The  love  of  parents, 
strong  in  most  households  up  to  a  certain 
point,  makes  the  father  and  the  mother  the 
working  models  of  manliood  and  womanhood. 
In  this  matter  example  is  much  more  power- 
ful than  precept.  I  had  an  illustration  of  this 
not  long  ago.  I  was  interviewing  a  boy  of 
thirteen  whose  school  work  was  not  successful 
and,  while  searching  for  the  causes  and  trying 
to  find  out  at  what  point  to  attack  his  disin- 
clination to  work,  naturally  tried  to  appeal  to 
him  on  the  score  of  his  affection  for  his  par- 
ents. While  I  could  not  draw  from  this  boy 
any  expression  of  disloyalty  concerning  his 
father,  it  was  perfectly  evident  that  he  re- 
garded my  effort  to  show  that  he  could  gratify 
his  father  in  no  better  way  than  to  make  a 
fine  record  at  school,  with  amused  contempt. 
Indirectly  I  discovered  that  all  he  knew  of  his 


BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION       179 

father's  academic  career  was  the  part  wliich 
was  not  exactly  inspiring  and  not  at  all  calcu- 
lated to  make  his  son  feel  that  he  regarded 
scholarship  as  of  any  particular  importance. 
Now  this  gentleman  had  a  really  good  record. 
He  had  within  his  grasp  prohably  the  most 
successful  tool  possible  for  inspiring  his  hoy, 
namely,  the  natural  expectation  that  his  son 
should  follow  in  his  footsteps.  But  he  never 
dreamed,  till  I  called  his  attention  to  the  fact, 
that  the  creditable  stories  of  his  academic  ca- 
reer could  be  told  without  boasting  or  that 
anything  might  be  interesting  to  his  son  Init 
his  escapades!  At  all  events,  that  is  all  the 
youth  heard  about  with  any  show  of  enthu- 
siasm or  interest  on  the  part  of  his  father. 
But  I  know  another  man  whose  boy,  a  lad  of 
six  playing  with  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  key,  one 
day  heard  the  story  of  his  father's  struggle  for 
that  coveted  badge  of  scholastic  honor.  "Then 
I  must  get  one,  too,"  said  the  six-year-old. 
And  he  did.  That  is  what  I  call  breeding 
ambition.  That  young  boy  went  to  college 
with  a  distinct  vision  of  scholastic  achievcnicnt 
in  his  mind.  He  had  through  college  a  visible 
symbol  before  him  of  industry,  energy  and 
fidelity  to  the  interests  of  the  mind.  He  made 
numberless  sacrifices  of  j)k'asure  to  attain  it. 
Who  will  deny  that  the  brief  time  taken  to  tell 


180  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

that  story  and  to  explain  the  meaning  of  the 
little  golden  key  did  not  bring  forth  abundant 
fruit?  But  how  many  Phi  Beta  Kappa  men 
who  have  young  children  think  about  this  pow- 
erful resource  for  the  breeding  of  intellectual 
ambition  in  their  children?  Certainly  not  a 
college  professor,  friend  of  mine,  whose  chil- 
dren are  constantly  in  trouble  with  their 
school  work,  which  bothers  children  and  par- 
ents alike,  though  the  father  is  an  academic 
star  of  first  magnitude!  Why  do  certain 
families  send  representative  after  representa- 
tive to  the  great  football  teams  of  the  great 
colleges?  Because  the  one  subject  which  the 
younger  boys  hear  from  their  elders  is  football 
and  they  plan  to  be  football  stars  as  much  as 
they  plan  to  be  men.  And  given  the  requisite 
physical  equipment  they  usually  are.  If  you 
do  the  same  thing  with  scholarship  you  will  get 
scholars.  But  you  cannot  talk  football  and 
get  scholarship.  You  cannot  talk  money  for- 
ever and  get  idealists.  You  cannot  talk  stocks 
or  any  other  kind  of  business  continually  and 
get  young  people  who  will  think  about  the 
pleasures  and  satisfactions  of  learning. 
Children,  like  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  thrive 
by  what  they  feed  upon.  Ambition  is  not  a 
heaven-sent  quality  given  to  some  people  and 
withheld  from  others.     It  is  a  seedling  in  every 


BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION      181 

child's  soul.  Nurtured,  trained  and  fertilized 
you  can  get  just  what  you  want  to  get.  You 
cannot  of  course  make  a  silk  purse  out  of  a 
sow's  ear.  But  you  can  cause  the  young  mind 
to  grapple  with  what  it  makes  its  supreme  in- 
terest, and,  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases, 
master  it  and  bring  forth  fruit,  some  thirty, 
some  sixty  and  some  an  hundred  fold. 

Emerson  says,  "Each  man  is  a  hero  and  an 
oracle  to  somebody;  and  to  that  person  m hat- 
ever  he  says  has  an  enhanced  value."  This 
truth,  true  of  all  persons,  is  trebly  true  of 
children  in  the  home.  If  the  father  chooses  to 
be  a  hero  to  his  sons,  he  may  be  one  and  re- 
main one  to  the  end  of  his  days.  If  the  mother 
chooses  to  be  a  heroine  to  her  daughters,  she 
has  the  first  and  the  best  chance  with  her  own 
children.  If  father  and  mother  let  that  dis- 
tinction go  to  somebody  else,  it  is  their  own 
deliberate  choice.  That  should  be  understood 
by  every  parent  in  the  land.  And  if  it  is 
thoroughly  understood  it  will  be  seen  that  not 
only  is  great  power  transferred  by  this  enor- 
mous influence  but  likewise  enormous  respon- 
sibility shirked.  It  must  be  true  from  what 
we  see  before  us  everywhere  that  parents 
either  do  not  think  about  this  matter  or  de- 
liberately abdicate  from  the  throne  of  infhunci' 
with  their  children.     We  often  speak  of  what 


182  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

is  bred  in  the  bone.  But  what  is  bred  in  the 
bone  is  comparatively  unimportant  beside  what 
is  bred  in  the  thought,  experience  and  ideahz- 
ing  tendencies  of  children  at  an  early  age.  I 
know  a  little  girl  whose  older  brother  and 
sister  very  early  developed  special  tastes  and 
tendencies  which  they  frequently  expressed. 
"j^Viid  what  are  you  going  to  be,  little  girl?" 
she  was  asked.  "Oh,  I  am  going  to  be  just  a 
mother,"  said  the  child.  It  is  superfluous  to 
remark  that  this  child  has  one  of  the  most  re- 
markable mothers  in  the  community  where  she 
lives.  She  has  idealized  motherhood  and  her 
children  need  no  Madonnas  of  legend  or  poe- 
try or  art  to  give  them  sweet,  enduring  and 
inspiring  visions  of  what  beautiful  motherhood 
is  and  ought  to  be.  Her  children  will  call  her 
blessed  to  the  end  of  days.  And  it  is  safe  to 
say  that  they  will  carry  into  life  as  among  the 
strongest  influences  of  their  careers  that  lovely 
model  of  perfect  motherhood! 

Breeding  ambition  has  another  important 
function  which  must  be  noted  in  dealing  with 
this  subject.  The  moment  you  have  roused 
ambition  in  a  child  j^ou  have  created  a  fresh 
source  of  power  within  the  child's  mind  and 
at  the  same  time  located  there  the  responsibil- 
ity, in  so  far  as  it  relates  to  effort,  instead  of 


BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION      183 

in  authority  exercised  from  -sntliout.  Once 
ambition  is  aroused  tlie  process  of  auto-educa- 
tion begins — self-examination,  self-discipline 
and  self -direction — crudely  enough  at  first  but 
nevertheless  clearly  apprehended  and  acknowl- 
edged. This  leads  to  independent  efforts 
which  are  more  valuable  in  their  mental  result 
than  all  formal  education.  Spencer  refers  to 
this  in  his  essay  on  Education  when  he  says: 
"Any  piece  of  knowledge  which  the  pupil  has 
himself  acquired,  any  2)roblem  whicli  he  has 
himself  solved,  becomes  by  virtue  of  the  con- 
quest much  more  thoroughly  his  than  it  could 
else  be.  The  preliminary  activity  of  mind 
which  his  success  implies,  the  concentration  of 
thought  necessary  to  it  and  the  excitement  con- 
sequent on  his  triumph  conspire  to  register  all 
the  facts  in  his  memory  in  a  way  that  no  mere 
information  heard  from  a  teacher  or  read  in  a 
schoolbook  can  be  registered.  Even  if  he 
fails,  the  tension  to  which  his  faculties  have 
been  wound  up  insures  his  remembrance  of  the 
solution,  when  given  to  him,  better  than  hall- 
a-dozen  repetitions  would."  It  is  clear  enough 
here  that  the  important  thing  is  to  inspire  tliat 
effort,  to  cause  the  child  to  want  to  do  some- 
thing worth  while  so  nuich  th;it  it  will  get  tlie 
"mental  tension"  and  the  "activilv  ol'  mind" 


184  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

incidental  to  the  satisfaction  whicli  it  craves. 
Notice,  too,  that  failure  in  this  direction  and 
under  these  conditions  is  not  failure  at  all. 
The  increment  gained  from  a  solid  effort  pre- 
cludes serious  distress  because  the  exercise  of 
the  faculties  has  so  greatly  increased  the  con- 
sciousness of  power. 

The  habit  of  aiming  at  a  great  result,  of 
looking  to  an  ultimate  instead  of  an  immediate 
goal  of  effort,  tends  to  enlarge  the  mental 
powers  and  expand  the  mental  horizon  in 
children  as  it  does  in  adults.  Once  get  young 
persons  in  the  way  of  looking  for  some- 
thing that  is  palpably  great  and  as  palpably 
beyond  their  easy  reach  and  you  get  the  same 
kind  of  action  in  the  mind  that  you  see  in  the 
arms  of  a  small  child  reaching  for  an  object 
upon  a  shelf  just  beyond  its  reach.  The  ob- 
jective point  may  not  be  reached.  But  the 
effort  has  strengthened  the  mental  fiber,  it  has 
felt  its  possibilities,  it  has  tried  itself  for  an 
end;  demanding  the  best  that  is  in  it,  and  this 
habituallj^  done,  will  breed  personal  deter- 
mination and  perseverance  which  are  simply 
ambition  at  work.  It  is  not  material  just  how 
the  effort  works  out.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
nine  times  out  of  ten  the  child  succeeds  and 
immediately  tries  for  something  still  higher. 
But  to  inspire  this  effort,  the  memory  must  be 


BREEDING  INTELLECTUAL  AMBITION       1S5 

stored  with  high  thoughts  and  spleiuhd  deeds 
which  call  for  intellectual  activity,  and  the 
vision  must  be  kept  fixed  upon  the  great  per- 
sonalities who  have  enriched  the  thought  of 
the  world. 


\ 


The  playing  of  games  may  have,  indeed,  ought  to 

have,  the  excellent  results  which  Bowen  claimed  for 

it,  and  yet  it  may  be  doubted  whether  the  experience 

of  life  shows  that  boys  so  brought  up   do   in   fact 

turn  out  substantially  more  good-humored,  unselfish 

and  fit  for  the  commerce  of  the  world  than   others 

who    have    lacked    this    training.     And    the    further 

question  remains  whether  the  games  are  worth  their 

costly   candle.     That  they   occupy   a   good   deal   of 

time  at  school  and  at  college  is  not  necessarily  an 

evil,  seeing  that  the  time  left  for  lessons  or  study  is 

sufficient  if  well  spent.     The  real  drawback  incident 

to  the  excessive  devotion  that  games  inspire  in  our 

days  is  that  they  leave  little  room  in  the  boy's  or  the 

collegian's  mind  either  for  interest  in  his  studies  or 

for  the  love  of  nature.     They  fill  his  thoughts,  they 

divert  his  ambition  into   channels   of  no  permanent 

value  to  his  mind  or  life,  they  continue  to  absorb  his 

interest  and  form  a  large  part  of  his  reading  long 

after  he  has  left  school  or  college. 

— James  Beyce,  Sketch  of  Edward  Bowen  of 
Harrow. 


IX 

THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  MIND 

Perhaps  the  general  impression  upon  many 
readers  of  what  has  been  previously  written, 
wdll  be  a  feeling  that,  after  all,  desirable  as  all 
these  things  may  be  and  profitable  for  the 
child's  future  and  its  advancement  in  life  and 
usefulness,  the  price  which  it  demands  is  too 
great  to  be  paid.  JNIost  peo])le  mature  in  life, 
conscious  only  of  the  burdens  of  life,  ol'tcn  of 
the  struggle  for  mere  existence,  and  not  in- 
frequently disillusioned  by  tlieir  own  experi- 
ences, will  reason  tliat  the  young  j)e()ple  will 
meet  the  severe  struggle  of  life  soon  enough 
and  that  they  should  not  be  denied  the  pleas- 
ures of  childhood,  so  called,  and  should  be 
kept  care  and  fancy  free  as  long  as  })()ssible. 
]Many  parents  have  said  substantially  that  to 
the  present  writer.  Such  opinions  assume 
that  worth-while  activities  of  the  child  iniiid 
are  necessarily  devoid  of  pleasure  and  that 
somehow  the  consideration  In  childhood  of  what 
afterward  constitute  the  serious  studies  of 
life,  despoils  children  of  jdeasure,  vitiates  the 
natural   freedom   and   artlessness  of  children 

187 


188  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

and  prematurely  induces  solemnity  of  mind 
and  sedateness  of  behavior.  Let  me  assure 
every  person  who  holds  this  view  that  there  is 
no  more  mistaken  assumption  possible  than  this. 
I  have  at  this  moment  come  in  from  the 
meadow  adjoining  my  summer  home  where  I 
have  officiated  as  "catcher"  in  a  "battery" 
where  a  very  young  person,  just  past  his  tenth 
year,  officiated  as  "pitcher."  For  an  hour  I 
sweated,  ran  and  dodged  and  jumped  around 
trying  to  perform  the  duties  of  this  onerous 
position  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  young  twirler 
who  is  planning  to  make  a  baseball  record 
along  with  the  rest  of  his  ambitions.  Previ- 
ous to  the  baseball  episode  he  had  been  put 
through  for  an  hour  what  the  persons  to  whom 
I  have  referred  above,  would  probably  style 
a  grilling  lesson  in  verbal  analysis,  and  im- 
mediately succeeding  the  play  another  lesson 
equally  grilling  in  Latin  was  taken  up.  It 
can  be  said  with  absolute  truthfulness  that  the 
delight  in  the  first  and  third  periods  was  not 
only  not  less  but  if  anything  more  than  that 
in  the  baseball  achievements,  which  was,  all 
things  considered,  not  despicable.  The  de- 
light of  a  "straight  throw"  in  Latin  composi- 
tion was  not  less  than  that  in  a  ball  sent  ac- 
curately over  the  plate.  The  pleasure  of 
prompt  and  fruitful  recognition  of  numerous 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  MIND         189 

verbal  relations  between  \ari()us  word  stems 
did  not  seem  to  be  one  wliit  less  than  that 
which  resulted  from  a  happy  "catch."  In 
fact,  I  observed  tliat  the  same  expressions  of 
delight  and  the  same  symptoms  of  pleasure  ap- 
peared in  both  cases,  and  the  spontaneous  move- 
ments in  both  instances  were  so  simihir,  so 
alike,  both  in  the  sources  from  mIiIcIi  they 
sprang  as  well  as  in  tlieir  manifestations,  that 
the  conclusion  was  irresistible  that  one  tiling 
gave  as  much  pleasure  as  the  otlier. 

The  same  thing  has  appeared  to  me  many 
times,  and  this  was  simply  a  momentary  test 
made  for  the  purpose  of  a  careful  and  minute 
study  of  results  in  a  given  case.  The  fact  is, 
pleasure  in  mental  acliievement  esj)ccially 
when  due  to  conscious  and  sustained  effort,  is 
quite  as  great  and  quite  as  satisfactory  as  any 
other;  if  anything,  more  so.  ]\Iental  activity 
and  mental  effort,  as  sources  of  ])leasure,  have 
rarely  been  adequately  considered  by  teacliers 
generally,  and  the  pleasure  motive  to  study  is 
almost  absolutely  ignored  by  l)otli  ])arc!ils  .ind 
teachers.  ]Many  teacliers  do  at  tinus  o])sir\e 
the  pleasure  of  children  when  they  have  done 
any  work  satisfactorily,  but,  for  some  reason 
or  other,  probably  the  assumption  to  which  I 
have  referred,  iivind  making  use  ol'  llu'  pU-as- 
ure    motive    in    inducing   special    adxaiu'c    in 


190  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

this  direction.  But  I  cannot  see  why  a  child 
should  not  be  taught  and  guided  to  seek  pleas- 
ure in  one  kind  of  exercise  as  well  as  in  an- 
other. Here  again  the  child  generally  knows 
how  to  i^lay  one  thing  and  does  not  know  how 
to  play  the  other.  It  is  a  question  often  of 
which  game  it  knows  best  and  if  the  games  of 
the  mind  (and  these  games  continue  through- 
out life,  and  one  of  the  conspicuous  joys  of  a 
scholarly  life  is  the  delight  and  satisfaction  of 
discovery,  whether  original  or  otherwise)  were 
as  steadily  taught  and  as  carefully  outlined  in 
one  instance  as  in  the  other,  you  would  get  sub- 
stantially the  same  results.  How  many  times 
a  little  girl  making  the  first  doll  clothes  comes 
to  the  mother  or  nurse  for  instruction!  And 
it  is  usually  given  because  here  various  kinds 
of  motives  combine  in  the  parent's  mind  to 
give  the  needed  lesson  carefully  and  often 
with  extraordinary  care.  Expert  needle- 
women can  remember  such  instruction  often 
given  and  illustrated  over  and  over  again.  It 
soon  comes  to  be  a  pleasurable  exercise  to  do 
these  things  because  the  little  girl  knows  how. 
The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  boys  who  want 
to  be  taught  how  to  "pitch"  and  "catch"  and 
how  to  "curve"  balls  and  what  not,  things  that 
relate  to  the  athletic  field.  But  how  many 
peoi^le  ever  give  the  child  an  exhibition  of  the 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  MINI)         191 

pleasures  which  they  themselves  have  in  some 
distinctive  mental  achievement!  How  often 
is  a  fine  paragraph  in  a  hook  or  a  specially 
beautiful  passage  in  a  classic  poem  read  and 
its  excellencies  shown  to  the  child,  its  imagery 
praised,  its  force  and  power  extolled  and  the 
desire  for  emulation  aroused?  The  assump- 
tion that  this  has  not  interest  for  the  child  is 
wholly  gratuitous.  What  can  be  done  and  is 
done  can  be  seen  in  the  celerity  with  whidi  some 
smart  speech,  usually  an  impertinence,  I  may 
add,  is  repeated  which  raises  a  general  laugh 
at  the  table  or  in  a  company  of  adults,  when 
the  child  is  made  to  feel  that  it  has  gained 
general  approval  or  applause  which  is  mis- 
taken for  aj^proval.  AVhat  is  thus  secured  on 
an  utterly  false  basis  is  possible  on  a  sound 
basis  as  well  and  will  not  only  give  pleasure, 
but,  I  believe,  greater  pleasure  than  mere 
athletic  skill  because  it  is  seen  to  involve  higher 
and  better  powers.  The  reason  why  many  a 
young  boy  wants  to  be  a  baseball  player  above 
all  things  is  that  he  hears  everybody  give  praise 
to  a  successful  pitcher  or  ])atter  and  comes  to 
think  these  are  the  great  achievements  of  men. 
The  same  motive  operates  among  college 
students  to  so  great  an  extent  that  scholarshii) 
by  general  consent  has  lost  its  eminence  in 
American    educational    institutions.     But    let 


192  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

the  emphasis  be  chaiif^ed  so  that  a  crack  scholar 
is  pointed  out  instead  of  a  crack  football  j)layer 
and  you  will  instantly  find  a  change  of  feel- 
ing among  the  young  students  whose  future  as 
such  is  still  before  them.  One  of  the  greatest 
motives  to  activity  in  any  direction  is  the 
pleasure  incident  to  the  approval  of  those  whom 
we  esteem  most  and  love  best.  With  young 
children  that  means  father  and  mother.  Let 
father  and  mother  place  the  emphasis  where 
it  belongs  and  half  the  battle  is  won. 

It  is  a  common  saying  that  things  display 
the  qualities  of  their  source.  Get  it  once  into 
the  youthful  mind  that  mental  effort  and  men- 
tal achievement  are  the  great  glory  of  human 
beings  and  bring  into  the  foreground  of  its 
consciousness  not  the  gladiators  of  history  but 
its  statesmen,  its  thinkers,  its  scientists,  its  phi- 
lanthropists, and  you  have  furnished,  first  of 
all,  a  means  of  comparing  results  which  almost 
any  child  will  comprehend  very  quickly.  His- 
tory is  full  of  examples  and  the  instinct  of 
hero-worship  tends  to  reenforce  the  example. 
But  if  all  your  heroes  are  w^arriors,  your  child 
will  want  to  pla}^  with  drums,  guns  and 
swords.  If  the  major  part  of  its  notion  of 
great  men  and  great  works  is  connected  with 
destruction,  you  will  very  likely  stimulate 
every  instinct  of  destruction  and  provoke  ex- 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  MINT)         193 

periments  in  this  art  at  a  very  early  stage. 
But  if  your  heroes  are  in  another  reahn  and 
the  heroes  of  science,  many  of  tlieni  yet  to  he 
discovered  so  far  as  hterature  is  concerned,  or 
the  heroes  of  humanity,  you  create  niiiid  stuff 
that  rebels  without  effort  against  destruction 
and  starts  out  with  entirely  opposite  notions  of 
activity  and  self-expenditure.  ^Vud  started  on 
such  a  course,  pleasure  in  its  fulfillment  fol- 
lows naturally  and  inevital)ly  whenever  any- 
thing in  this  direction  is  acliieved.  This  can 
be  inculcated  very  early  in  life  by  the  habit 
and  praise  of  smooth  and  careful  articulation, 
accuracy  in  speech  and  any  distinctive  acliievc- 
ment  which  has  a  mental  origin  or  character. 
The  child  will  very  soon  feel  what  its  elders 
value  most  and  will  seek  to  meet  the  demand 
by  furnishing  the  supply. 

The  pleasure  which  the  child  experiences 
and  of  which  it  gives  the  most  instant  signs, 
is  more  than  exceeded  by  that  of  the  parent  or 
teacher  who  thinks  along  this  line.  I  know 
nothing  so  fine  and  so  thoroiiglily  satisfying 
as  to  see  the  mind  of  any  human  being  work- 
ing soundly  and  smoothly  and  with  a])])arent 
self-regulative  i)Ower.  i\nd  to  see  this  ])roc- 
ess  in  its  early  stages,  growing  in  a  eliild's 
mind,  is  a  very  delightful  sensation,  ^'ou  get 
the  happy  consciousness  that  your  onvii  mental 


194  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

processes  are  sound  because  your  errors  will 
be  repeatedly  thrown  back  at  you  in  large  let- 
ters like  the  big  hand  of  a  child's  penmanship. 
You  will  have  a  constant  corrective  for  your- 
self and  you  will  unconsciously  be  kept  on 
edge,  so  to  speak,  to  make  your  own  power 
more  accurate,  your  own  insight  more  acute 
and  your  own  habits  more  careful.  And  in- 
stead of  being  irksome,  the  first  time  you  see 
your  own  effort  eventuating  in  a  fine  effort 
on  the  part  of  the  child,  only  improved  with 
the  child's  simplicity,  naturalness  and  artless- 
ness,  taking  on  naturally  what  you  have  labor- 
iously acquired  by  heavy  self-subordination 
and  self-restraint,  j^ou  will  feel  that  you  have 
made  a  genuine  contribution  to  the  fulness 
of  the  life  of  mankind.  In  fact,  you  have 
made  such  a  contribution  because  his  genera- 
tion will  do  almost  by  nature  what  you  have 
had  to  acquire  by  effort,  and  a  real  and  per- 
manent advance  in  the  standard  of  humanity 
has  been  made.  And  as  one  capacity  after 
another  develops  and  they  begin  to  cooperate 
and  you  see  growing  up  about  you,  healthy, 
sane,  self -controlling  and  self -directing  indi- 
viduals, who  are  mentally  strong  as  they  are 
morally  sound,  you  feel  that  the  hero  who  has 
simply  killed  so  many  thousand  people  is  a 
mere  slaughterer  and  not  worthy  to  be  men- 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  MIND         195 

tioned  by  the  side  of  one  fatlier  or  mother 
who  advances  by  ever  so  small  a  degree  the 
type  of  humanity  by  which  this  world  is  to  be 
inhabited.  It  looks  like  extracting  a  very 
great  and  portentously  big  satisfaction  from 
one  insignificant  little  baby!  But  it  is  there 
for  every  parent  who  will  take  the  trouble  to 
find  it.  JNIoreover,  it  furnishes  a  touchstone 
for  testing  most  of  the  things  for  which 
people  spend  life  and  substance,  which  is  very 
comforting.  The  vain  competitions  of  life 
and  the  silly  inanities  for  which  many  people 
pour  out  their  strength  and  labor  are  by  this 
work  shown  in  their  true  relation  and  their  true 
valuation,  and  the  estimate  is  wholly  gratify- 
ing. What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he  be  a 
captain  of  industry  and  his  son  a  debauchee  or 
a  hairbrained  idiot  known  only  in  dance  halls 
and  chorus-girl  shows?  What  shall  it  profit 
a  woman  if  she  be  a  leader  in  every  club  in 
town,  the  first  figure  at  every  social  splurge 
and  her  gowns  reported  in  every  Sunday  news- 
paper if  her  daughter  is  a  silly  person  from 
whom  no  serious  opinion  can  be  extracted  by 
anybody?  What  indeed  sliall  it  profit  if  you 
are  everything  in  this  world  and  your  suc- 
cessors are  distinctly  less  creditable  as  human 
beings  than  your  own  generation  or  that  which 
preceded  it?     The  knowledge  that  you  have 


196  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

improved  your  own  family,  your  own  genera- 
tion and  your  own  contribution  to  the  race,  is 
the  highest  satisfaction  in  this  world,  with  only 
the  one  exception — the  knowledge  of  an  hon- 
orable, unstained  life. 

The  pleasures  of  the  mind  last  longer  than 
any  others.  Bodily  pleasure  at  best  has  its 
necessary  limits.  The  shouting  and  the  tu- 
mult of  physical  satisfaction  even  of  the  best 
sort  dies  and  disappears.  But  the  genuine 
pleasures  of  the  mind  last  forever.  They 
have  a  staying  quality  which  enriches  advanc- 
ing years  and  forms  the  natural  linkage  with 
the  growth  of  the  world.  Everyone  must 
have  noticed  the  differences  between  that  kind 
of  people  who  at  any  age  seem  to  be  in  touch 
with  what  is  going  on  and  who  read  with  de- 
hght  and  aviditj^  the  newest  things  that  are 
taking  place  everywhere  in  the  world  and 
others  not  so  constituted.  I  have  in  mind 
such  a  man,  an  octogenarian  now,  who  is  the 
youngest  person  I  know.  His  childliood  was 
such  a  childhood  as  I  have  described  in  the 
foregoing  pages,  nurtured,  fertilized,  trained 
and  enriched  at  every  turn,  and  his  old  age, 
which  term,  by  the  way,  applied  to  him  seems 
foolishness,  finds  him  one  of  the  most  active 
men  of  the  community,  keen  in  intellect, 
stored  in  learning  and  a  perennial  source  of 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  MIND        197 

pleasure  to  all  his  friends  by  the  sumptiious- 
ness  of  his  remembrance  of  personal  and  his- 
torical lore.  Mental  pleasures  last.  And  if 
it  is  true  that  advancing  years  tend  to  revert 
to  the  earhest  impressions  of  life,  tlien  why 
not  make  the  "second"  childhood  a  no])le,  full 
and  worthy  one  in  which  the  mind  shall  turn 
back  to  great  things,  high  thoughts  and  com- 
panionship with  the  princes  of  the  earth  in 
thought,  imagination  and  knowledge?  Could 
anything  be  more  reasonable  or  desirable!' 
There  is  an  exquisite  2)leasure  in  all  this  whicli 
cannot  be  expressed  in  words  but  which  only 
the  initiated  know. 

The  durable  pleasures  are  those,  generally 
speaking,  which  are  founded  upon  some  fixed 
expansion  of  the  personality,  either  by  way  of 
qualities  of  mind  or  alliance  with  some  of  the 
permanent  forces  of  life.  Knowledge  is  the 
one  thing  which  never  fails  to  present  attrac- 
tion and  allurement  to  those  who  have  once 
become  acquainted  with  her  varied  stores. 
Nor  does  this  mean  th.at  a  man  need  to  be  a 
person  of  vast  learning.  It  means,  sim])ly, 
that  he  shall  have  peeped  behind  tlie  curtain 
and  seen  what  there  is  to  learn  and  how  many 
people  there  are  in  the  world  wlio  are  finding 
out  interesting  and  valuable  things  for  the 
w^orld's  happiness  and  the  world's  work.     If 


198  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

that  peep  behind  the  curtain  is  gained  in  child- 
hood, by  just  so  much  earlier  is  the  happiness 
of  knowledge-getting  and  knowledge-giving 
begun  and  a  career  of  delight  is  entered  upon 
which  no  loss  of  the  things  which  the  world  com- 
monly finds  delight  in,  can  possibly  disturb 
or  diminish.  It  brings  into  common  life  and 
annexes  as  a  permanent  resource  for  daily  use 
an  asset  which  is  among  the  most  valuable  as 
it  is  altogether  the  most  enduring.  It  creates 
companionships,  lofty,  inspiring  and  satisfy- 
ing. It  induces  emotions  as  varied  as  the  skill 
of  the  human  mind  to  delineate  and  express. 
It  arouses  and  stimulates  interests  which  last 
as  long  as  life  lasts.  The  intellect  of  child- 
hood is  fitted  by  nature  to  begin  this  process  at 
once.  It  has  momentum,  the  greatest  it  ever 
acquires  in  its  entire  history.  It  suffers  no 
ennui  and  all  its  faculties  are  awake  to  receive 
what  is  offered.  Happy  indeed  the  childhood, 
which,  when  that  appetite  awakens,  is  fed 
upon  the  great  things  of  life  and  brought  at 
once  into  contact  and  acquaintance  with  the 
great  minds  of  the  race.  It  means  that  the 
pleasure  motive  in  life,  of  a  kind  and  quality 
which,  other  things  being  equal,  rarely  does 
harm  and  always  does  good  to  the  soul, 
is  harnessed  to  the  work  of  life  and  pulls 
him  who  has  it  over  many  a  hard  place  and 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  MIND        199 

makes  many  an  arid  spot  in  the  human  strug- 
gle blossom  and  bloom  like  the  rose.  This 
phase  of  education  has  been  too  little  dwelt 
upon  and  in  fact  has  in  many  cases  been  elim- 
inated from  the  thought  of  education.  Edu- 
cation, properly  speaking,  is  work.  It  is  and 
should  be  hard  work,  effort  to  the  limit  of 
capability  always.  But  it  is  work,  allied  to 
delights,  properly  conceived,  which  rob  tlie 
name  of  its  terrors  and  which  offer  at  every 
turn  new  scenes  to  charm  the  intellectual  vision 
and  fresh  vistas  to  lure  the  inquirer  into  clioice 
spots  in  the  great  world  of  knowledge. 

It  is  among  the  finest  attainments  of  man- 
kind when  they  achieve  that  balance  of  emo- 
tion and  intellect  which  keeps  them  serene  and 
strong  and  undisturbed  by  the  vicissitudes  of 
life  which  few  human  beings  in  this  world 
ever  altogether  escape.  To  see  a  man  serene 
and  self-contained  under  great  pressure, 
whether  it  arises  from  business,  from  private 
trials  or  personal  sorrows,  griefs  or  misfor- 
tunes, is  to  see  the  greatest  triumpli  of  the  will 
that  is  possible.  This  is  the  proof  and  sub- 
stantially the  only  proof  that  man  is  superior 
to  the  beasts  and  to  things.  The  instrument 
that  gives  it  in  its  finest  form  is  religion,  of 
course.  But  next  to  religion,  inimediately 
after  the  consciousness  of  the  supreme  order 


200  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

of  the  world  and  the  government  of  God,  Is 
the  full  mind,  conscious  that  the  worst  aberra- 
tion of  fortune  is  not  the  major  fact  in  life 
nor  even  the  important  fact  of  the  immediate 
situation  out  of  which  it  arises.  Knowledge 
of  the  laws  of  nature,  ability  to  discern  even 
ever  so  dimly  the  varieties  of  forces  at  work 
in  the  world,  and  certainty  that  in  the  darkest 
moment  there  is  sunlight  somewhere,  steadies 
the  mind  and  uplifts  the  heart  because  it  is 
based  not  on  some  blind  hocus-pocus,  hastily 
summoned  and  repeatedly  muttered  to  obfus- 
cate the  already  confused  mind  and  make  it 
forget  the  present  need,  but  on  wide  knowl- 
edge of  men,  literature,  science,  art,  nature, 
and  of  itself  supreme  over  all  and  producer 
of  them  all.  To  feel  the  kinship  which  the 
awakened  and  trained  mind  feels  with  all  the 
great  intellectual  producers  of  the  world  is  to 
guarantee  serenity  and  strength  for  every 
possibility  of  life.  This  fact  at  once  and  au- 
tomatically releases  the  mind  from  many 
anxieties  and  it  can,  therefore,  without  fear 
and  without  stint,  take  in,  as  it  develops,  the 
pleasures  of  each  condition  and  can  drink  to 
the  full  of  the  springs  of  delight  which  abun- 
dant knowledge  opens. 

When     shall     these     springs     be     opened? 
After  ten  or  a  dozen  valuable  j^ears  have  been 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  MINI)        201 

lost,  when  the  mental  edges  have  ahxady  been 
dulled,  when  coarse  and  ugly  things  liave  al- 
ready integrated  themselves  into  the  juvenile 
intellect  and,  weed-wise,  sought  the  best  places 
and  fixed  their  tenacious  grip  on  most  fertile 
spots?  Shall  we  wait  till  mature  life  has 
sown  the  seeds  of  self-distrust  and  doubt, 
made  suspicion  a  habit  and  organized  the  an- 
tagonisms of  the  mind  behind  which  lurk  ene- 
mies, real  and  imaginary,  to  be  overcc^ne  at 
every  turn?  Or,  when  the  unclouded  intelli- 
gence first  looks  out  on  the  world,  surrounded 
only  by  affection  and  unconscious  of  the  great 
issues  to  be  fought,  and  steadily  strengthened 
by  super\ision,  by  instruction,  by  the  ever- 
widening  circle  of  information,  by  self-e(iuip- 
ment  through  organization  of  the  mind,  till, 
when  it  breaks  forth  into  the  world,  its 
strength  is  as  the  strength  of  ten  not  only  be- 
cause its  heart  but  its  mind  is  also  pure?  Ilaj)- 
piness  in  life  comes  thus  almost  necessarily 
because  the  feelings,  the  judgments,  the  ob- 
ligations of  life  combine  to  secure  adherence 
to  fundamental  law,  and  in  these,  ha])i)iness 
is  secure.  There  ought  to  be  no  (juestion  as 
to  which  answer  should  be  given  to  these  inter- 
rogatories. Speculatively,  most  people  give 
only  one  answer.  Open  the  mind  of  youth  to 
the  best,  they  say,  promi)tly  and  with  no  hesi- 


202  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

tation  at  all.  But  who  shall  do  it  ?  Who  will 
take  from  the  moments  of  self-indulgence  a 
few,  to  give  them  to  the  work  of  thus  enrich- 
ing the  child  by  his  side?  Who  will  make  the 
child  the  first  and  supremest  interest  and  so- 
cial enjoyment,  travel,  amusements  and  all 
that  these  imply  secondary?  That  is  the 
great  question!  No  school  can  do  what  the 
school  in  the  home  can  do  and  ought  to  do. 
No  teacher  can  do  what  the  parent  can  do  and 
ought  to  do.  'No  educational  establishment 
can  possibly  achieve  that  first  and  greatest 
success  for  education,  which  is  w^on  in  the 
home,  where  the  first  things  are  kept  first  and 
where  lofty  and  beautiful  ideals  crystallized  in 
the  memorials  of  knowledge  through  the  works 
of  the  intellectual  leaders  of  the  race,  are 
among  the  earliest  associations  of  the  child 
mind. 

It  is  here  that  the  great  battle  is  really 
fought  and  is  fought  usually  not  by  the  cliild 
but  by  him  or  her  who  is  the  child's  sponsor. 
Life  being  what  it  is,  one  cannot  do  every- 
thing and  its  disposition  becomes  simply  a 
question  of  what  one  desires  most.  Hav- 
ing settled  that,  it  becomes  a  question  of 
character,  of  resolution  and  devotion.  The 
end  seems  so  distant  and  at  times  it 
does  have  the  appearance  of  projecting  into 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  ^fTXD         203 

the  young  life  things  and  matters  wliich  seem 
remote  from  its  natural  interests.  Why 
should  my  little  nine-year-old  he  told  all  ahout 
the  struggle  concerning  the  House  of  I^ords, 
its  entire  history  carefully  rolled  out  ])ef'ore 
him,  its  great  names  identified,  its  place  in 
English  history  illustrated  and  recounted  in 
forty  different  forms  and  methods  to  give  him 
a  vivid  picture  of  what  the  present  political 
revolution  in  England  really  means?  Is  tluit 
matter  for  a  child?  Why  not  let  him  have 
the  exhilaration  of  simply  wasting  his  emo- 
tions on  the  momentous  question  whether  the 
"Tigers"  or  the  "Athletics"  will  win?  Sim- 
ply because  I  choose  the  remoter  j)leasure, 
leaving  aside  for  the  moment  all  else,  that 
when  he  is  twenty-five  or  possibly  less,  and,  in 
the  revolutionary  progress  of  history,  the 
House  of  Lords  will  be  in  English  life  what 
a  horse  car  is  in  the  streets  of  a  modern  city, 
if  it  is  there  at  all,  he  will  have  among  the  per- 
manent furnishings  of  his  mind  the  events 
which  have  made  history  and  life  for  him  ns  li;it 
it  then  will  be  and  have  them  stored  up  for  the 
many  varied  uses.  That  information  will  be 
habited  in  his  mind  which  others  will  labori- 
ously seek  out  in  books  and  libraries.  Hut 
above  and  beyond  all  these,  he  will  have  the 
pleasure  of  recalling  that  this  history  is  also 


20i  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

allied  to  his  home,  to  his  child  life,  to  the  dear- 
est and  hest  associations  which  this  world 
brings,  and  will,  when  that  subject  is  men- 
tioned (as  will  be  true  of  many  hundreds  and 
perhaps  thousands  of  other  themes) ,  give  him 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  in  his  mind's  eye  his 
cliildhood  home  and  the  faces  of  those  whom 
he  has  loved  long  since  and  lost  awhile.  Is 
there  an}i;hing  more  alluring  than  this?  Is 
there  a  more  beautiful  and  worthy  task  to  ex- 
alt the  parental  mind  or  charge  the  parental 
heart  with  zeal  and  patience? 

Thus  there  is  established  a  reciprocal  intel- 
lectual relation  which  is  pleasurable  beyond 
anytliing  else  in  life.  In  extent,  there  is  noth- 
ing which  matches  it  whatsoever.  It  not  only 
fills  this  life  but  it  reaches  far  beyond.  Many 
persons  w^hose  intellectual  traditions  reach 
bej^ond  a  single  generation  can  readily  recall 
things  which  came  to  them  from  the  elder  day 
by  inheritance,  so  to  speak,  which  merely 
means  that  ihey  had  been  inculcated  naturally 
and  formed  the  mind  stuff  of  daily  existence 
and  thought.  When  new  letters  or  memo- 
rials of  such  elders  are  unearthed  and  when 
the  treasures  of  memory  are  unlocked  and  one 
sees  the  power  of  the  continuous  stream  of 
knowledge-loving  people,  not  necessarily  pro- 
fessionally engaged  in  the  so-called  intellect- 


THE  PLEASURi:S  OF  THE  MIND        205 

ual  callings  (all  callings  arc  becoming  intcllcct- 
ualized  and  even  the  industrial  race  is  to  tlie 
trained  mind  now  already  won),  there  is  tlie 
pecuhar  pleasure  of  being  in  the  stream  of 
that  life  and  the  natural  representative  of  cer- 
tain things  which  have  come  down  from  otiicr 
days.  Sometimes  the  profession  is  handed 
down  from  father  to  son  for  generations  in 
this  way.  Sometimes  certain  responsibilities, 
civic,  philanthropic  and  otherwise,  are  handed 
along  from  one  generation  to  another,  and  the 
public  expectation  demands,  as  the  natural 
responsibility  creates,  definite  attitudes  and 
services  to  the  commimity.  In  the  older  por- 
tions of  America  even  already  there  are  fam- 
ilies of  whom  the  communities  in  whicli  they 
live  expect  certain  kinds  of  things  and  are 
disappointed,  shocked  or  grieved,  as  tlie  case 
may  be,  if  the  desired  result  is  not  forthcom- 
ing. This  is  the  kind  of  hereditary  succession 
which  we  need  in  a  democracy  if  we  are  not 
to  have  eternally  a  raw  community  alert  in- 
deed and  intensely  self-conscious  and  vital  in 
power  and  deed,  without  doubt,  but  essentially 
unlovely  and  having  at  its  ])asc,  heartache  and 
barrenness.  Americans  es])ccially  need  to 
think  about  these  things  and,  if  they  liave  even 
the  slightest  experience  of  the  pleasure  which 
is  created  in  having  this  view   linnly   before 


206  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

the  mind  and  in  accordance  with  it,  set  out  to 
make  the  next  generation  what  they  wish  their 
own  might  have  been,  the  onward  march  to- 
ward perfection  is  begun. 

But  the  strategic  point  for  this  larger  re- 
sult, as  for  the  individual  perfecting,  lies  in 
the  mind  of  the  child.  It  seems  to  be  reason- 
ably well  settled  that  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence will  steadily  grow  harder  and  also  the 
contests  of  the  future,  though  the  competi- 
tions in  some  directions  will  undoubtedly  be 
lessened,  in  others  they  will  be  highly  intensi- 
fied. Once  in  the  struggle,  there  is  little  hope 
that  men  will  take  time  for  this  kind  of  cul- 
ture and  the  kind  of  life  which  such  culture 
requires.  The  ideas  and  the  ideals  must  be 
firmly  planted  in  the  heart  and  thought  of 
youth.  And  this  youth  must  be  early  youth, 
for  here  again  the  economic  tension  is  more 
and  more  invading  the  years  of  youth  and 
hastening  the  thousands  of  our  children  out 
into  the  world  with  only  the  equipment  wliich 
they  get  in  childhood  and  sometimes  hardly 
that.  That,  at  least,  should  be  made  as  rich 
and  fertile  as  it  is  possible  to  make  it.  This 
subject  is  too  vast  even  to  hint  at  in  this  place, 
but  it  is  broached  merely  for  the  purpose  of 
mentioning  again  that  no  struggle  is  severe 
if  there  is  pleasure  mixed  up  with  it,  and  en- 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  MIND        207 

durance  is  vastly  extended  and  interest  quick- 
ened and  every  power  heightened  if  there  goes 
with  it  the  sense  of  dehght  and  inward  satis- 
faction. The  earlier  that  fact  is  mastered, 
the  earlier  the  whole  view  of  life  is  altered  and 
the  sooner  rational  living  begins.  It  does  not 
need  a  very  reflective  man,  seeing  the  feverish 
way  in  which  the  mass  of  men  hurry  to  and 
fro  to  get  what  they  call  pleasure  or  relaxa- 
tion from  the  struggles  of  their  daily  life,  to 
realize  that  these  people  are  not  only  not  get- 
ting what  they  are  seeking  but  are  wasting 
valuable  powers  and  corrupting  and  degrad- 
ing life  while  seeking  recreation.  One  does 
not  have  to  be  a  seer,  sitting  in  a  street  car  and 
looking  into  the  worried  faces  of  men  and 
women,  to  know  that  most  of  these  people 
have  no  real  peace  of  mind  and  not  many  re- 
.(iources  which  make  for  serenity  within  or  joy 
in  the  work  of  life.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  in 
many  of  these  people  imagination  has  utterly 
perished.  They  are  simply  tlie  j)awns  worked 
by  other  men  of  power  and  imagination  wlio 
have  brought  their  minds  into  a  higli  state  of 
efficiency  and  effective  reaching  after  tlie  re- 
sult they  seek.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  tlie  ca- 
pacity for  real  and  recreative  pleasure  even,  in 
many  cases  has  disa])})cared. 

The  joy  of  life  springs  from  tlic  sources 


208  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

of  joy  and  is  not  piim2:)cd  into  life  by  buying 
admission  to  a  place  labeled  amusement,  just 
as  education  is  not  to  be  secured  necessarily 
at  a  ])\'dce  called  a  college.  Joy  comes  from 
real  alignment  with  the  things  that  make  for 
security,  contentment  and  peace.  Funda- 
mentally these  qualities  are  moral,  but  though 
the  nature  of  them  is  moral,  their  strength  or 
Aveakness  and  their  sterility  or  fertilitj^  depend 
upon  the  mental  furnishings  with  which  they 
are  buttressed  about.  Deep  down  at  the 
sources  of  life,  before  birth  in  many  cases,  but 
at  birth  and  immediately  thereafter,  certainly 
are  the  foundations  of  life  to  be  laid.  And 
the  spirit  in  which  they  are  laid  must  be  that 
w  hich  contemplates  a  result  so  sublime  that  all 
the  imaginative  powers  are  stirred  to  their  ut- 
most to  make  them  secure  and  strong  and  capa- 
ble of  upholding  the  greatest  superstructure 
that  can  possibly  be  laid  upon  them.  Who 
can  know  but  this  small  creature  whom  you 
can  hold  almost  in  the  palm  of  your  hand  ^^i\\ 
one  day  be  the  pivot  upon  w^hich  some  vast 
and  mighty  human  interest  will  revolve?  It 
is  no  impertinence  for  anj'^  mother  to  think 
this  possible!  History,  if  it  teaches  ami:hing, 
teaches  that  the  obscure  and  unknown  great 
outnumber  the  known  and  magnified  great  by 
many  millions.     I  tliink  often  of  the  obscure 


THE  PLEASURES  OF  THE  MINI)        209 

and  unknown  man  of  whom  wc  are  told  in  the 
New  Testament,  who  hehl  the  rope  that  held 
the  hasket  hy  which  St.  Paul  was  let  down 
outside  the  city  walls,  escaping  with  liis  life 
and  thus  saving  to  tlie  world  that  marvelous 
mind  and  activity  with  all  its  suhse(juent  re- 
sult in  the  history  of  the  world!  But  upon  so 
slight  a  thing  may  rest  so  vast  a  result !  The 
importance  and  supremacy  of  the  individual 
will  never  he  reduced  however  society  devel- 
ops. To  take  a  large  and  comprehensive  view 
of  the  possibilities  of  hfe  for  the  humblest  child 
is  not  only  not  presumption  hut  is  the  oidy 
true  view  at  least  for  the  parents  who  hronglit 
it  into  the  world.  In  the  home  school  will  its 
earliest  and  its  most  effective  lessons  be 
taught.  In  the  home  school  will  its  first  and 
substantial  ethical  outlook  upon  life  be  de- 
veloped. In  the  home  school  will  the  ])crma- 
nent  joys  of  life  and  the  springs  thereof  be 
opened  and  the  seat  of  the  abiding  pleasures 
of  life  be  uncovered.  But  these  si)rings  are 
within,  and  they  are  found  only  by  the  ])a- 
tient,  persistent  and  intensive  utilization  of 
the  earliest  moments  of  life.  "Vergiss' 
nicht  am  JNIorgen  die  Ijamj)en  zu  sorgen,"  is 
one  of  the  maxims  the  little  (lerman  girls  are 
taught.  "Forget  not  in  the  morning  to  trim 
the  lamps,"  is  the  housewifely  instruction  to 


210  THE  SCHOOL  IN  THE  HOME 

the  becoming  home-makers.  Let  us  not  for- 
get that  this  homely  maxim  has  a  larger  mean- 
ing. Forget  not  in  the  Morning  to  trim  the 
Lamp  of  Life,  and  at  Evening  Time  there 
shall  be  Light! 


THE  END 


L  007  538   188  9 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


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